I don't see any difference in the playability of the cards and mechanics in this set for Constructed and Limited than there appears to be for other recent sets. For a while now, most mechanics haven't been very good outside of Limited.
As for how good the Mythics are, I see 5 that will probably see some play in Standard Constructed. Others that might make a splash in Modern.
Not going to bash; everyone should be able to state their opinion without being attacked. However, I disagree with the OP on practically every point. The set seems fine and completely in line with the changes that have been occurring in Magic recently.
I definitely do wish that set mechanics were more designed with constructed playability in mind, but that's not a new problem with Gatecrash. Metalcraft was mostly garbage. Morbid was mostly garbage. Detain was mostly garbage. These are all mechanics with Limited in mind. Basically all mechanics are also too narrow. Why was Unleash always just a single +1/+1 counter? Why wasn't there such a thing as Unleash 2 or 3? Why weren't there drawbacks other than not being able to block? Why weren't there any buffs for not Unleashing the creature instead of just adding a drawback? These are the sorts of questions I ask with almost every mechanic that comes out in Magic today, and Gatecrash certainly seems to continue the trend (Gruul just has a narrow, watered down version of Channel), but it's nothing particular to this set.
In short, Magic is still a decent game, the designers aren't completely ignoring Constructed with this set, and, at worst, they are just continuing a trend they started years ago.
A quick note: If a perm had more than one type of counter Proliferate can only add one of one type. It con only add one counter
To further lessen the confusion, you get to choose which type of counter is added. The text simply says "a kind," meaning only one type, but it's the effect's controller's choice as to which type is added.
I think people are very much overvaluing the Roc at this point. I mean, I'm OK with it, as I can probably plan on running people over with unleashed creatures and get away with it. However, looking at the cards released from the set, there are a few things to notice:
- There seem to be slightly more flyers than usual (probably due a decent amount of Azorius cards having flying). This makes each individual flyer less valuable because there are more creatures that can block them.
- Three is the magic number for power/toughness. It is very easy to kill a creature with a toughness of three because most playable limited creatures already have a power of three or more.
- Due to the high toughness, there aren't many good/playable creatures with a toughness of two or less. This lowers the value of the ability on the Roc.
There are, however, very few creatures / spells that can deal with a creature with four toughness. At five power for four mana, this is a great deal. It even has Trample to help you get into the red zone. In the end, your goal is to kill your opponent.
I think the Roc seems a lot better than he is because he's "OMG REMOVAL TRIGGER ON ATTACK." However, he is easier to kill and simply doesn't do as much damage. These traits, IMO, make him inferior to the giant, even ignoring the signals being sent. This pack should make the pick obvious -- taking the giant puts you as the only person in red for this pack; taking the Roc gives you a slightly weaker card that forces you to contend with more people over future picks.
The best thing the Roc has going for it is that, if you draft it and don't get hated out of your colors, then the rest of the Detain spells, Azorius removal, etc. is yours to be had and, overall, Azorius is probably the strongest guild when given your choice of which Commons/Uncommons to grab.
60.78% of the voters just set themselves up to get hated out of the draft. Detain is quite obviously the most powerful limited mechanic, and it's in the same colors as the Roc. Also, there are two other good Blue/White cards in this pack, and there's really no way of telling what colors you're in if you get passed this, so the next person is just going to start taking the best cards.
If you're lucky, you put the person directly next to you into Red. It's less likely that the Croc will table for them, so it's less likely that they'll want to take the Mangler. If you're not lucky, they'll see the other blue flyer in the pack and possibly consider, "Hey, this is the only decent blue card here, and it only commits me to one color. Let's grab it force blue out of the draft." If they consider this strategy, IE: planning on grabbing blue flyers so no one else can and set themselves up for pack 2, then you're going to be very dry later.
The next question is... Is it worth it? It's not exactly heads and shoulders above the other cards as far as I'm concerned. Unlike the Mangler, it has no value once it's killed, and even the Mangler gets through sometimes unexpectedly before people can untap and deal with it. It isn't quite as large and doesn't actually kill people as well as the red card; sometimes the added on ability simply isn't going to be relevant.
Now consider this... The Bloodfray Giant is the only solid, good red card in the pack. The rare is pretty risky for limited and likely won't pay off, and the other red card is the sort of thing you only maindeck if you run out of better creatures; usually he'll just be a bonus sitting in your sideboard. Taking this into consideration, I feel like taking the red card is a pretty good signal that will allow everyone on your right to fight over blue/white/green while you start grabbing up the good red stuff. It puts you in a very good position to be able to force that color.
But maybe that's just me. I hate dead picks, and especially my first pick, first pack. I think it's safer to go with the red, and while many people might consider it "opinion," I believe, just like in poker, you have to play the odds. There is usually a right and a wrong choice, and even though the wrong choice sometimes pays off, if you consistently make choices like that, you won't have consistent success.
The right card to pick here is the Bloodfray Giant because it maximizes the combination of card quality and lessening the chance that you are setting yourself up to be hated out of the draft / end up with less playable cards than you should have.
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Also, it's the biggest guy in the pack. When it doubt, just take the biggest monster.
Even then, not much of a combo. I get to put an Enchantment on a 1/1 for the chance that I can copy an Instant/Sorcery twice at a time instead of once. Woo.
Also, I realize you weren't actually excited about this, either. I'm just further reinforcing that this guy is not that great. I'm neither going to say he's awful, though. Come up with a Lightning fast agro deck with plenty of burn spells, and this guy could actually potentially matter; I just think it's not likely.
I agree that this card isn't very good. It's pretty sweet in EDH, and it'll likely just be a sideboard card for Standard. It doesn't have much place in Modern or Legacy.
That being said, one particular poster seems to have taken offense at this card, and I'll go ahead and set the record straight on the matter.
lets say i have 1 card in hand and its a removal spell, i can kill their creature asap when they try to combo. if i just have this is my hand, they can play their combo tapping out on a turn, then go off the next if they are under no threat and i have 2 mana open.
You are completely wrong. Yes, this is not a good card. Yes, it probably shouldn't see any play in Modern. However, on the very, very particular point you are attempting to argue, you are dead wrong.
If you are talking about playing against Splinter Twin, then this card is only worse than removal in exactly one situation, and that is when they are trying to kill you with their Plan B.
If they are attempting to kill you with, say, a Wurmcoil Engine, or something other than the combo, then removal would be better. However, if they are trying to kill you with the combo, then this card is much, much better.
Why? I'll feed you, baby bird.
Because they literally cannot win with the combo as long as you are able to resolve this card. They can't do it. Eventually, they need to make the tokens and they need to swing. This card will kill them immediately upon resolution.
Now, I'm not advocating actually playing this card against them. Doing so means you've put this card somewhere in your 75, and that was probably a mistake. Removal is much more versatile against all of the other decks in the format that do not happen to get hosed by this narrow card.
However, this narrow, bad card happens to do one thing very well; it shuts down infinite token strategies. As long as that is their only means of killing you, then you can sit back and just force them to discard their hard counters because they will probably deck before you do.
One other side note... This card doesn't give a crap about Spellskite. What removal spells see any play in Modern that can say that?
Some people like to try and justify uses for bad cards. Well, the opposite is also true. You're trying to justify how bad this card is by simply making up reasons and lying about what little usefulness it does have to make it seem even worse than it already is.
Seriously, leave the horse alone. We know this isn't a good card. What did that horse even do to you, anyway?
it amazes me all these people disagreeing with me have never done anything in this game and dont even post in competitive forums.
Claiming that people have "never done anything in this game" because they don't post in competitive forums is pretty much pure ignorance. You have no idea how good/bad these people are at the game other than your own misinformed opinion based on the posts you actually have read by them. And last time I checked, Kai Budde and Jon Finkel don't spend their free time posting in competitive forums on MTG Salvation.
I'll even issue a little challenge. You know nothing about me other than the posts you can find by me, my join date and my user name. How good am I at Magic? Explain your response and, if necessary, definition of "good at Magic." Do I have any Top 8's? Have I won the Pro Tour?
That would be a strictly better Force Spike, by quite a wide margin at that. Considering Force Spike is already somewhat overpowered, such a card seems unlikely to see print.
...did anyone else see this? Just making sure I'm not crazy.
I don't typically play countermagic. I don't really consider it enjoyable. However, Force Spike is far from overpowered. In fact, I can't think of a single deck in any format that actually plays Force Spike anymore. Know why? It's been outclassed.
On a more general note to the thread as a whole, I think the counterspell shown is pretty weak (especially when compared to a bonus like Condescend has). Also, a cycle of cards that is based around hating Blue? I'm not sure I see the point. Sure, countermagic doesn't have to be just Blue, but I can't think of a single good counter off the top of my head aside from Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast that aren't Blue.
Hopefully they don't continue with the cycle in Gatecrash. It's OK for single cards to hate on Blue (say Green or Red cards, so the Elephant and Extraction work). However, an entire cycle of cards that cannot be countered seems like a wasted use of a cycle. As powerful as it can be sometimes, countermagic is just one small aspect of Magic as a whole, and it's essentially 100% limited to Blue spells. Why create an entire cycle of cards based around hating that niche, especially when you aren't creating powerful cards for that niche, anyway?
Supreme Verdict is a silly card. There's only one precedent for Blue having an uncounterable Instant/Sorcery, and that's a counterspell.
Uncounterable Instants/Sorceries are primarily Red, and the secondary color is Green. It doesn't really make any sense to have this spell in Blue except for giving Blue/White control decks a tool. I'm sure that was the intent, because this spell fits Boros much better both color and guild theme wise.
I'm OK with what the card actually does; it's simply in the wrong colors for the effect.
It goes to your hand. The "Stack" is a legitimate zone, and once the Dark Confidant has been cast for free via Cascade, it is no longer in Exile; it exists only on the stack.
Remand tells you to put the spell into your hand, so you do. You don't care whether or not the spell was cast from Exile, your hand, the Graveyard, etc.
An exception to that, however, would be Flashback, as Flashback has special rulings that specifically state it will be put into Exile whenever it would go to any other zone.
I would say the ban list is probably more or less set in stone now. Everything was there for a reason, and the longer it sits there, the more people will just come to accept it. Where there are things people are less ready to accept because they think it would help X archetype (like AV), I think they plan to print safe replacements instead of banning. Once there is a good replacement that doesn't have unwanted side effects, those types of unban conversations should die down.
I agree with this with the exception of a single card on the ban list. That card is Golgari Grave-Troll. There is no longer any reason that this card is banned except that they have yet to unban it.
Originally, GGT was banned because the Dredge deck was too good. Well, it turns out that they didn't care about how consistent the deck was; the only thing that mattered was that Dread Return was still killing people on Turn 3. Sure, it happened less frequently with GGT gone, but the problem was still that people were dying to the Dredge deck on turn 3.
So, let's take a look at Dredge now. Dredge combo doesn't exist anymore. Why? Because Dread Return was banned. Dread Return was the problematic card. So now here's a new question: would Golgari Grave-Troll have eventually been banned, anyway, if Dread Return were banned first? I am going to say absolutely not.
Not a single person has lost before turn 4 because of a Golgari Grave-Troll being Dredged unless a Dread Return was also cast before turn 4. There has never been an uproar that repeatedly playing a giant Golgari Grave-Troll was "unfair" or "broke" the format in any way, in any format.
So why, then, is Golgari Grave-Troll still banned? I don't care about Dredge right now, and I don't see any new deck existing, or any existing deck getting better, as a result of unbanning GGT. And that's my point exactly.
There shouldn't need to be a reason to unban something. The card never should have been banned in the first place. Unbanning it now is simply a matter of principle. It shows that Wizards actually cares and acknowledges when they got something wrong. Wizards could ban Shock in every format and, except for random Shock enthusiasts, no one would care. But you know what? It should never be banned in the first place.
There's no point in banning a card like Shock, and there's no point in banning a card like Golgari Grave-Troll.
I tend to bring this card back up every 20 pages of Modern Ban-List threads or so because it's ridiculous that this card was ever banned. Of all the cards on the ban list, I can see a valid reason for what I quoted above being true. However, I cannot think of a single reason for GGT getting banned except that Wizards screwed up. They aimed their banhammer at Dredge and missed and, as a result, an innocent card that should still be legal today is not legal to play.
Wow. People expect way too much out of a new mechanic today. We're not being conditioned to it, either. This card is really good. Not just OK. Good.
1) It is a 5/5 for 2GG. Simply being a 5/5 for four mana is almost enough to make you Constructed Staple worthy depending on the other creatures in the format. Are token decks amazing? Then this guy will not be amazing. Are tokens easily hated out while large creatures are harder to take down? This guy is a powerhouse.
2) The ability... I think people aren't realizing what this actually does. For the same cost as a Titan, you can turn any random 1/1 mana dork into a Titan sized creature. "Hey, Smashem, that's still not good!" Oh? Did we all of the sudden forget that you get this ability for free? How about that using this ability means that they even had to deal with your 5/5 to begin with? Oh yeah, did I mention that no Counterspell variant is able to deal with the ability? So basically... card advantage that doesn't care about countermagic and is tacked on as a freebie to a very efficient creature is somehow not good enough?
3) The ability is enough. All that's left is to see how they vary the costs, and take a look at what creatures have the ability. As I mentioned before, it turns Elves into Titans. It turns Birds into better Dragons. This mechanic will see significant play, even if this creature is the only worthwhile creature with the mechanic. It will still see play.
What you are saying makes complete sense, but I just don't like the exiling portion of it. It doesn't feel very graveyard cycle to me, especially after having a mechanic like Dredge.
I think you're just looking at it the wrong way. The old Golgari could bring creatures back by draining away at your library. The new Golgari can bolster the living by draining the essence of the dead. That's "very graveyard" to me.
Either way, they're basically still just dealing with Magic that interacts with the dead. Before they were stealing the deck to bring back the dead. Now they're stealing the dead's souls to strengthen the living. Or Undead. Whatever you have on the Battlefield.
TL;DR -- The mechanic seems balanced, yet still powerful. The mechanic is also flavorful. I'm going to have a blast playing with the new mechanic. If you are bored with the new mechanic, go back to playing blue. This mechanic's all about kick ass creatures.
Given the new rules about triggers, I think it's wrong and should be changed.
Given the new triggers rules, mandatory triggers are no longer mandatory *from the opponent's perspective*. That's the important thing. They should from now on be treated as optional ability trigger, and it should be mandatory that the controler announces every ability triggers going on the stack. There is little point in the new triggers rule if the opponent cannot know if there is an ability on the stack or not.
Agreed, and for more than one reason. The very first thing you do with a targeted spell or ability after putting it onto the stack is declare the target of that spell or ability. At the time the AP points to the Delver, I always believed it was assumed that the trigger is still in the process of going onto the stack, at which point you have the opportunity to respond. You cannot simply assume that he wanted to target the Delver, skip the action of declaring a target (not allowed for shortcuts outside of some sort of loop structure, IE, Grapeshot targeting opponent 20 times), and then simply resolve the trigger all as a part of one shortcut.
No matter how you look at it or how long the NAP waited, it's wrong to say that the trigger has resolved. When he points to the Delver, he's choosing the target. When he's choosing the target, the NAP has not yet received priority. Case closed.
I'd also like to add that this is an excellent topic. Is it possible to get this stickied? If so, it'd be a good idea to keep a list of all of the listed creatures in the OP. It seems like something that everyone will continue asking, and given the amount of Hate Bears that have been in the last couple blocks alone, I'd say there's a good chance that it will update pretty regularly.
You don't want to play late-game dead draws like Jace's Erasure. They're trap cards. Without the proper setup, you can't ensure that they ever actually do anything, so you want something that will be able to further your goal no matter when you draw it.
I also didn't include Dream Twist because it doesn't do enough. Even in an almost best-case scenario where the game drags on forever and your opponent's effective library size is ~40 cards (due to them drawing a card every turn, etc.), that is still 2 cards milled = 1 life. This means Dream Twist is still just a 3-mana Sorcery that deals 3 to a player only. That type of card is not good enough.
Instead, what you need to do with the deck is simply stall while milling out with the occasional big mill spell to finish it more quickly. Jace mills a lot. Mind Sculpt mills a lot. Thought Scour replaces itself, so it's OK. If you notice, I listed a total of 14 non-land cards. This means that the other 20 cards in your deck should all be dedicated to stopping your opponent from being able to win. If you can do that effectively, then sure, you can win with mill.
However, at this point, you're less of a "mill deck" and more of a "hey, I'm another U/B Control Deck that wins slightly differently than other U/B control decks... wooo!" If you're OK with that, then maybe give it a try. However, cards like Grave Titan are much better at ending games on their own than Memory Adept, and that's pretty much why you'll only see mill as a 1% of the time strategy in Control VS Control matchups.
As a final side note, if Glimpse gets reprinted, it'd be interesting to see if the price goes down because more are available to the casual crowd, or if the price sky rockets because the casual crowd players all start trying to get more copies so they can "compete" in Standard.
Not enough ways to make the flying tokens. You should drop 1 Enchantment and 2 Rally the Peasants for +2 Midnight Haunting and +1 something else aggressive. You literally have 6 ways to pump creatures that you only have 10 ways of playing, and playing those pump spells isn't even worth it for just Delver alone. If you're looking at getting actual value out of that Enchantment, it really is only doing it with the token generators, and you only have 6 of those. That's an even split. Way too many pump effects.
Realistically, you're not going to be able to flashback Rolling Temblor very often. If you take that out of the equation mostly, then you really just have Lingering Souls and Think Twice. This is not enough to warrant even the singleton Burning Vengeance. If you start playing cheaper spells (specifically burn spells) and decide to play Snapcaster Mage, it's something to consider keeping, but you should definitely drop 1 Burning Vengeance for +1 some other threat.
You're also in the exact right colors to be able to use Elesh Norn, Unburial Rites, etc. Why not take advantage of that? I realize that, yes, there are tons of other decks already doing this, but...
There's a reason why. Those cards are really good. Seriously, an Elesh Norn is better than Rolling Temblor and Favorable Winds both put together. Right now, too many pieces of your deck require the other pieces to be available in order for it to work right. Why not just play a bunch of cards that are good on their own and even better with other good cards?
Your own statements about early/mid/late game reflect this:
Early game: Delver into Favorable Winds backed up by removal/spirit swarm.
Mid game: use Chandra to fork instants and sorceries for removal/burn to face/creature pump (Chandra + forked Rally + delver/spirits is nasty)
Late game: Drop Burning Vengeance and finish them off while recycling/forking cards from GY.
So what happens if you don't have Delver Turn 1? Your deck literally doesn't have any other early game. You're just sitting and waiting to draw into the cards you need to make your Lingering Souls and Midnight Hauntings, which are likely needing to be used just to chump and stay alive, good.
Mid-game... What if you don't have Chandra? Lingering Souls is value on its own, but... you don't have a fast start, and you don't have any cards that are powerful in the mid-range, so what exactly is the mid-game plan? To play sub-par cards and try and stay alive until you can get out a Favorable Winds or Chandra? It's a pretty narrow strategy, and you don't have the proper card manipulation to make sure it actually happens consistently.
Your late game plan is based around a 1-of. A 1-of that requires multiples of the nine cards with flashback in the deck you actually play, and only six of those cards have reasonable flashback costs you'll actually be able to afford to cast and stay alive in the late-game. Seriously, the late-game plan is to find your one-of with zero deck manipulation, then start rolling through all six of your decent flashback spells? That sounds like an excuse for simply not having a late game plan, which this deck does not have.
It may sound harsh, but this deck doesn't accomplish anything that the same color reanimator decks aren't already doing, except those decks are doing a better job of it and have multiple angles of attack. That's probably the general direction you should be looking towards on how to move forward with this deck. So far, this deck only has a fast early game if you open with Delver, has a mid-range plan that isn't that great, and does less in the late-game than almost every other deck in the format. The deck needs a solid plan and cards that can consistently get it there. You have an idea to go on, but it's not going to hit its target consistently, and it doesn't have powerful, amazing plays it can fall back on if the primary strategy flops. I'd say focus on what you want to accomplish first, then find the right cards to get your there. Right now you're just playing a bunch of cards that can be good, but all mashed together without a plan for consistently bringing it together.
Edit: As a side note, there's nothing in your main deck that can handle a hard cast Inferno Titan. That's a problem, as Inferno Titan is one of the best cards in the format right now, and it's a card that single-handedly is able to take apart basically every piece of your deck.
As for how good the Mythics are, I see 5 that will probably see some play in Standard Constructed. Others that might make a splash in Modern.
Not going to bash; everyone should be able to state their opinion without being attacked. However, I disagree with the OP on practically every point. The set seems fine and completely in line with the changes that have been occurring in Magic recently.
I definitely do wish that set mechanics were more designed with constructed playability in mind, but that's not a new problem with Gatecrash. Metalcraft was mostly garbage. Morbid was mostly garbage. Detain was mostly garbage. These are all mechanics with Limited in mind. Basically all mechanics are also too narrow. Why was Unleash always just a single +1/+1 counter? Why wasn't there such a thing as Unleash 2 or 3? Why weren't there drawbacks other than not being able to block? Why weren't there any buffs for not Unleashing the creature instead of just adding a drawback? These are the sorts of questions I ask with almost every mechanic that comes out in Magic today, and Gatecrash certainly seems to continue the trend (Gruul just has a narrow, watered down version of Channel), but it's nothing particular to this set.
In short, Magic is still a decent game, the designers aren't completely ignoring Constructed with this set, and, at worst, they are just continuing a trend they started years ago.
To further lessen the confusion, you get to choose which type of counter is added. The text simply says "a kind," meaning only one type, but it's the effect's controller's choice as to which type is added.
- There seem to be slightly more flyers than usual (probably due a decent amount of Azorius cards having flying). This makes each individual flyer less valuable because there are more creatures that can block them.
- Three is the magic number for power/toughness. It is very easy to kill a creature with a toughness of three because most playable limited creatures already have a power of three or more.
- Due to the high toughness, there aren't many good/playable creatures with a toughness of two or less. This lowers the value of the ability on the Roc.
There are, however, very few creatures / spells that can deal with a creature with four toughness. At five power for four mana, this is a great deal. It even has Trample to help you get into the red zone. In the end, your goal is to kill your opponent.
I think the Roc seems a lot better than he is because he's "OMG REMOVAL TRIGGER ON ATTACK." However, he is easier to kill and simply doesn't do as much damage. These traits, IMO, make him inferior to the giant, even ignoring the signals being sent. This pack should make the pick obvious -- taking the giant puts you as the only person in red for this pack; taking the Roc gives you a slightly weaker card that forces you to contend with more people over future picks.
The best thing the Roc has going for it is that, if you draft it and don't get hated out of your colors, then the rest of the Detain spells, Azorius removal, etc. is yours to be had and, overall, Azorius is probably the strongest guild when given your choice of which Commons/Uncommons to grab.
Again, TL;DR.... take the big guy. He's bigger.
If you're lucky, you put the person directly next to you into Red. It's less likely that the Croc will table for them, so it's less likely that they'll want to take the Mangler. If you're not lucky, they'll see the other blue flyer in the pack and possibly consider, "Hey, this is the only decent blue card here, and it only commits me to one color. Let's grab it force blue out of the draft." If they consider this strategy, IE: planning on grabbing blue flyers so no one else can and set themselves up for pack 2, then you're going to be very dry later.
The next question is... Is it worth it? It's not exactly heads and shoulders above the other cards as far as I'm concerned. Unlike the Mangler, it has no value once it's killed, and even the Mangler gets through sometimes unexpectedly before people can untap and deal with it. It isn't quite as large and doesn't actually kill people as well as the red card; sometimes the added on ability simply isn't going to be relevant.
Now consider this... The Bloodfray Giant is the only solid, good red card in the pack. The rare is pretty risky for limited and likely won't pay off, and the other red card is the sort of thing you only maindeck if you run out of better creatures; usually he'll just be a bonus sitting in your sideboard. Taking this into consideration, I feel like taking the red card is a pretty good signal that will allow everyone on your right to fight over blue/white/green while you start grabbing up the good red stuff. It puts you in a very good position to be able to force that color.
But maybe that's just me. I hate dead picks, and especially my first pick, first pack. I think it's safer to go with the red, and while many people might consider it "opinion," I believe, just like in poker, you have to play the odds. There is usually a right and a wrong choice, and even though the wrong choice sometimes pays off, if you consistently make choices like that, you won't have consistent success.
The right card to pick here is the Bloodfray Giant because it maximizes the combination of card quality and lessening the chance that you are setting yourself up to be hated out of the draft / end up with less playable cards than you should have.
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Also, it's the biggest guy in the pack. When it doubt, just take the biggest monster.
Even then, not much of a combo. I get to put an Enchantment on a 1/1 for the chance that I can copy an Instant/Sorcery twice at a time instead of once. Woo.
Also, I realize you weren't actually excited about this, either. I'm just further reinforcing that this guy is not that great. I'm neither going to say he's awful, though. Come up with a Lightning fast agro deck with plenty of burn spells, and this guy could actually potentially matter; I just think it's not likely.
That being said, one particular poster seems to have taken offense at this card, and I'll go ahead and set the record straight on the matter.
You are completely wrong. Yes, this is not a good card. Yes, it probably shouldn't see any play in Modern. However, on the very, very particular point you are attempting to argue, you are dead wrong.
If you are talking about playing against Splinter Twin, then this card is only worse than removal in exactly one situation, and that is when they are trying to kill you with their Plan B.
If they are attempting to kill you with, say, a Wurmcoil Engine, or something other than the combo, then removal would be better. However, if they are trying to kill you with the combo, then this card is much, much better.
Why? I'll feed you, baby bird.
Because they literally cannot win with the combo as long as you are able to resolve this card. They can't do it. Eventually, they need to make the tokens and they need to swing. This card will kill them immediately upon resolution.
Now, I'm not advocating actually playing this card against them. Doing so means you've put this card somewhere in your 75, and that was probably a mistake. Removal is much more versatile against all of the other decks in the format that do not happen to get hosed by this narrow card.
However, this narrow, bad card happens to do one thing very well; it shuts down infinite token strategies. As long as that is their only means of killing you, then you can sit back and just force them to discard their hard counters because they will probably deck before you do.
One other side note... This card doesn't give a crap about Spellskite. What removal spells see any play in Modern that can say that?
Some people like to try and justify uses for bad cards. Well, the opposite is also true. You're trying to justify how bad this card is by simply making up reasons and lying about what little usefulness it does have to make it seem even worse than it already is.
Seriously, leave the horse alone. We know this isn't a good card. What did that horse even do to you, anyway?
Claiming that people have "never done anything in this game" because they don't post in competitive forums is pretty much pure ignorance. You have no idea how good/bad these people are at the game other than your own misinformed opinion based on the posts you actually have read by them. And last time I checked, Kai Budde and Jon Finkel don't spend their free time posting in competitive forums on MTG Salvation.
I'll even issue a little challenge. You know nothing about me other than the posts you can find by me, my join date and my user name. How good am I at Magic? Explain your response and, if necessary, definition of "good at Magic." Do I have any Top 8's? Have I won the Pro Tour?
Go.
...did anyone else see this? Just making sure I'm not crazy.
I don't typically play countermagic. I don't really consider it enjoyable. However, Force Spike is far from overpowered. In fact, I can't think of a single deck in any format that actually plays Force Spike anymore. Know why? It's been outclassed.
On a more general note to the thread as a whole, I think the counterspell shown is pretty weak (especially when compared to a bonus like Condescend has). Also, a cycle of cards that is based around hating Blue? I'm not sure I see the point. Sure, countermagic doesn't have to be just Blue, but I can't think of a single good counter off the top of my head aside from Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast that aren't Blue.
Hopefully they don't continue with the cycle in Gatecrash. It's OK for single cards to hate on Blue (say Green or Red cards, so the Elephant and Extraction work). However, an entire cycle of cards that cannot be countered seems like a wasted use of a cycle. As powerful as it can be sometimes, countermagic is just one small aspect of Magic as a whole, and it's essentially 100% limited to Blue spells. Why create an entire cycle of cards based around hating that niche, especially when you aren't creating powerful cards for that niche, anyway?
Uncounterable Instants/Sorceries are primarily Red, and the secondary color is Green. It doesn't really make any sense to have this spell in Blue except for giving Blue/White control decks a tool. I'm sure that was the intent, because this spell fits Boros much better both color and guild theme wise.
I'm OK with what the card actually does; it's simply in the wrong colors for the effect.
Remand tells you to put the spell into your hand, so you do. You don't care whether or not the spell was cast from Exile, your hand, the Graveyard, etc.
An exception to that, however, would be Flashback, as Flashback has special rulings that specifically state it will be put into Exile whenever it would go to any other zone.
I agree with this with the exception of a single card on the ban list. That card is Golgari Grave-Troll. There is no longer any reason that this card is banned except that they have yet to unban it.
Originally, GGT was banned because the Dredge deck was too good. Well, it turns out that they didn't care about how consistent the deck was; the only thing that mattered was that Dread Return was still killing people on Turn 3. Sure, it happened less frequently with GGT gone, but the problem was still that people were dying to the Dredge deck on turn 3.
So, let's take a look at Dredge now. Dredge combo doesn't exist anymore. Why? Because Dread Return was banned. Dread Return was the problematic card. So now here's a new question: would Golgari Grave-Troll have eventually been banned, anyway, if Dread Return were banned first? I am going to say absolutely not.
Not a single person has lost before turn 4 because of a Golgari Grave-Troll being Dredged unless a Dread Return was also cast before turn 4. There has never been an uproar that repeatedly playing a giant Golgari Grave-Troll was "unfair" or "broke" the format in any way, in any format.
So why, then, is Golgari Grave-Troll still banned? I don't care about Dredge right now, and I don't see any new deck existing, or any existing deck getting better, as a result of unbanning GGT. And that's my point exactly.
There shouldn't need to be a reason to unban something. The card never should have been banned in the first place. Unbanning it now is simply a matter of principle. It shows that Wizards actually cares and acknowledges when they got something wrong. Wizards could ban Shock in every format and, except for random Shock enthusiasts, no one would care. But you know what? It should never be banned in the first place.
There's no point in banning a card like Shock, and there's no point in banning a card like Golgari Grave-Troll.
I tend to bring this card back up every 20 pages of Modern Ban-List threads or so because it's ridiculous that this card was ever banned. Of all the cards on the ban list, I can see a valid reason for what I quoted above being true. However, I cannot think of a single reason for GGT getting banned except that Wizards screwed up. They aimed their banhammer at Dredge and missed and, as a result, an innocent card that should still be legal today is not legal to play.
It's time to unban GGT.
1) It is a 5/5 for 2GG. Simply being a 5/5 for four mana is almost enough to make you Constructed Staple worthy depending on the other creatures in the format. Are token decks amazing? Then this guy will not be amazing. Are tokens easily hated out while large creatures are harder to take down? This guy is a powerhouse.
2) The ability... I think people aren't realizing what this actually does. For the same cost as a Titan, you can turn any random 1/1 mana dork into a Titan sized creature. "Hey, Smashem, that's still not good!" Oh? Did we all of the sudden forget that you get this ability for free? How about that using this ability means that they even had to deal with your 5/5 to begin with? Oh yeah, did I mention that no Counterspell variant is able to deal with the ability? So basically... card advantage that doesn't care about countermagic and is tacked on as a freebie to a very efficient creature is somehow not good enough?
3) The ability is enough. All that's left is to see how they vary the costs, and take a look at what creatures have the ability. As I mentioned before, it turns Elves into Titans. It turns Birds into better Dragons. This mechanic will see significant play, even if this creature is the only worthwhile creature with the mechanic. It will still see play.
I think you're just looking at it the wrong way. The old Golgari could bring creatures back by draining away at your library. The new Golgari can bolster the living by draining the essence of the dead. That's "very graveyard" to me.
Either way, they're basically still just dealing with Magic that interacts with the dead. Before they were stealing the deck to bring back the dead. Now they're stealing the dead's souls to strengthen the living. Or Undead. Whatever you have on the Battlefield.
TL;DR -- The mechanic seems balanced, yet still powerful. The mechanic is also flavorful. I'm going to have a blast playing with the new mechanic. If you are bored with the new mechanic, go back to playing blue. This mechanic's all about kick ass creatures.
Agreed, and for more than one reason. The very first thing you do with a targeted spell or ability after putting it onto the stack is declare the target of that spell or ability. At the time the AP points to the Delver, I always believed it was assumed that the trigger is still in the process of going onto the stack, at which point you have the opportunity to respond. You cannot simply assume that he wanted to target the Delver, skip the action of declaring a target (not allowed for shortcuts outside of some sort of loop structure, IE, Grapeshot targeting opponent 20 times), and then simply resolve the trigger all as a part of one shortcut.
No matter how you look at it or how long the NAP waited, it's wrong to say that the trigger has resolved. When he points to the Delver, he's choosing the target. When he's choosing the target, the NAP has not yet received priority. Case closed.
Grand Abolisher
Kami of Ancient Law
Leonin Relic-Warder
True Believer
War Priest of Thune
Vexing Shusher
Withered Wretch
I'd also like to add that this is an excellent topic. Is it possible to get this stickied? If so, it'd be a good idea to keep a list of all of the listed creatures in the OP. It seems like something that everyone will continue asking, and given the amount of Hate Bears that have been in the last couple blocks alone, I'd say there's a good chance that it will update pretty regularly.
Thought Scour: 4
Mind Sculpt: 4
Jace, Memory Adept: 2
Nephalia Drownyard: 4
Snapcaster Mage: 4
Counters
Removal
You don't want to play late-game dead draws like Jace's Erasure. They're trap cards. Without the proper setup, you can't ensure that they ever actually do anything, so you want something that will be able to further your goal no matter when you draw it.
I also didn't include Dream Twist because it doesn't do enough. Even in an almost best-case scenario where the game drags on forever and your opponent's effective library size is ~40 cards (due to them drawing a card every turn, etc.), that is still 2 cards milled = 1 life. This means Dream Twist is still just a 3-mana Sorcery that deals 3 to a player only. That type of card is not good enough.
Instead, what you need to do with the deck is simply stall while milling out with the occasional big mill spell to finish it more quickly. Jace mills a lot. Mind Sculpt mills a lot. Thought Scour replaces itself, so it's OK. If you notice, I listed a total of 14 non-land cards. This means that the other 20 cards in your deck should all be dedicated to stopping your opponent from being able to win. If you can do that effectively, then sure, you can win with mill.
However, at this point, you're less of a "mill deck" and more of a "hey, I'm another U/B Control Deck that wins slightly differently than other U/B control decks... wooo!" If you're OK with that, then maybe give it a try. However, cards like Grave Titan are much better at ending games on their own than Memory Adept, and that's pretty much why you'll only see mill as a 1% of the time strategy in Control VS Control matchups.
As a final side note, if Glimpse gets reprinted, it'd be interesting to see if the price goes down because more are available to the casual crowd, or if the price sky rockets because the casual crowd players all start trying to get more copies so they can "compete" in Standard.
Realistically, you're not going to be able to flashback Rolling Temblor very often. If you take that out of the equation mostly, then you really just have Lingering Souls and Think Twice. This is not enough to warrant even the singleton Burning Vengeance. If you start playing cheaper spells (specifically burn spells) and decide to play Snapcaster Mage, it's something to consider keeping, but you should definitely drop 1 Burning Vengeance for +1 some other threat.
You're also in the exact right colors to be able to use Elesh Norn, Unburial Rites, etc. Why not take advantage of that? I realize that, yes, there are tons of other decks already doing this, but...
There's a reason why. Those cards are really good. Seriously, an Elesh Norn is better than Rolling Temblor and Favorable Winds both put together. Right now, too many pieces of your deck require the other pieces to be available in order for it to work right. Why not just play a bunch of cards that are good on their own and even better with other good cards?
Your own statements about early/mid/late game reflect this:
So what happens if you don't have Delver Turn 1? Your deck literally doesn't have any other early game. You're just sitting and waiting to draw into the cards you need to make your Lingering Souls and Midnight Hauntings, which are likely needing to be used just to chump and stay alive, good.
Mid-game... What if you don't have Chandra? Lingering Souls is value on its own, but... you don't have a fast start, and you don't have any cards that are powerful in the mid-range, so what exactly is the mid-game plan? To play sub-par cards and try and stay alive until you can get out a Favorable Winds or Chandra? It's a pretty narrow strategy, and you don't have the proper card manipulation to make sure it actually happens consistently.
Your late game plan is based around a 1-of. A 1-of that requires multiples of the nine cards with flashback in the deck you actually play, and only six of those cards have reasonable flashback costs you'll actually be able to afford to cast and stay alive in the late-game. Seriously, the late-game plan is to find your one-of with zero deck manipulation, then start rolling through all six of your decent flashback spells? That sounds like an excuse for simply not having a late game plan, which this deck does not have.
It may sound harsh, but this deck doesn't accomplish anything that the same color reanimator decks aren't already doing, except those decks are doing a better job of it and have multiple angles of attack. That's probably the general direction you should be looking towards on how to move forward with this deck. So far, this deck only has a fast early game if you open with Delver, has a mid-range plan that isn't that great, and does less in the late-game than almost every other deck in the format. The deck needs a solid plan and cards that can consistently get it there. You have an idea to go on, but it's not going to hit its target consistently, and it doesn't have powerful, amazing plays it can fall back on if the primary strategy flops. I'd say focus on what you want to accomplish first, then find the right cards to get your there. Right now you're just playing a bunch of cards that can be good, but all mashed together without a plan for consistently bringing it together.
Edit: As a side note, there's nothing in your main deck that can handle a hard cast Inferno Titan. That's a problem, as Inferno Titan is one of the best cards in the format right now, and it's a card that single-handedly is able to take apart basically every piece of your deck.