SCG is just restocking, bros. They're huge however, so their restocking will have enormous effect on the market. SCG can't afford to not have a lot of fetches on-hand with Modern PTQ season coming up, and they do a lot of business, so they need A LOT of fetches.
I loved this card back in Old Extended alongside Ponder and Preordain for U/R combo builds, but it doesn't have a lot of legs in Modern, which is just too fast a format (arguably the fastest format besides maybe Pauper) for a two-mana cantrip that digs three deep. You can't really durdle in this format.
He could be mythic because the limited environment makes him too good as well. Remember they want this set to be drafted.
Goyf is not that good in Limited. Goyf will probably be a 3/4 in most games (creature, sorcery, instant in the 'yard) and he's a vanilla dude who can be chumped/walled/deathtouched/removed all day long. I wouldn't want him at Uncommon, because things could get a little silly there (mostly making Green highly splashable), but he would be fine at rare. He's no bomb, and not worthy of being pushed to Mythic. This was solely a "financial" decision by Wizards. They don't want Modern too cheap because it cannibalizes demand for Standard/Current-Set-Limited.
I like the -3 ability a lot, and the fact that her +1 is card advantage is also a plus...but she seems hard to work with. Maybe if the format slowed down you could make some sort of goofy deck that grinds advantage out of a Swamp-a-turn, but looks pretty difficult even then.
My guess is she'll show up in a flash-in-the-pan deck from someone like Conley Woods, but never be a big player in the meta. At least she isn't Tibalt...
I don't think collectors/speculators or even stores are the reason Wizards doesn't want Goyf's price tanking. Think about it, they announced the set would be released about three quarters of a year before it drops and in that time there is at least one Modern PTQ season. That gives people ample time and warning to get rid of their Goyfs if they are worried about taking a loss, and a fertile environment to do so in. Nobody would have gotten burned if Goyf was rare, packs were $3.50, and the print run was a bit larger. Well, except Wizards.
See, Wizards wants an Eternal format, but they don't want it too accessible. Then it competes with Standard and Limited, their big cash cows. Imagine if one Standard/Limited season was godawful, and Modern or Legacy were easily accessible. They'd lose out on so much revenue from committed Magic players, stores would be stocked full of unwanted product, and the game would be in dire straits.
Just as others have said, and I repeat, Wizards wants you playing Standard and Limited. Say it again folks....
Tibalt is so awful the only way to make a duel deck based around him would be to have a collection of the worst cards ever to make random discard hurt less. Juju Bubble, Castle Sengir, Search the City, Wood Elemental, Mudhole....the possibilities are endless(ly horrible).
Collectors are okay in my book, and I do think that reprints designed to make everything cheaper are a bad idea. I think it would be a real nasty move for Wizards to just start printing off Beta Power, Guru lands, Top 8 Promo Prizes, Test Prints, Misscuts, rare signatures, Summer magic, Korean foils, and the like just so that everyone has equal access to pimp. That would be unfair to collectors.
But speculators...well, I have no love for them, whose desire for dual-backed retirement savings impacts my ability to enjoy a large Legacy playerbase and the fruits of such. I have duals, Forces, LEDs, Karakas, and the like. I don't care if they plummet, because I would much rather they retain use-value at the expense of cash value. I didn't buy my Windswept Heaths at some figure much lower than what they are at now to try and beat the returns I could get on stocks or other equities, I bought them to play decks in tournaments, and because of the rapid increase in Legacy prices, driven by speculation and a "THEY'LL NEVER GO DOWN!" mindset (now where have I heard that before?) there is less Legacy participation, less competition (no, playing against budget Burn, Infect, Affinity, and the like is not all that fun after awhile), and I get less utility from the cards I bought.
The cardboard isn't just what Wizards is selling; they're also selling the expectation that this cardboard can be used to have a lot of fun with in organized play, that a solid structure will exist for it. I'm feeling cheated when this isn't happening, even if my net worth is probably only positive because of my goddamn children's card game purchases years back.
Bottom line, if you want to collect, I'm with you. But if you want to be a speculator-player, well your interests are opposite mine...and I "have the cards", so this isn't the "ur spoiled blah blah".
Plow Under (and Green) isn't the direction I'd take for LD. First up, you want the two best pseudo-LD spells in the format: Boomerang and Eye of Nowhere, because they are versatile and cost two mana. One of them is also an instant. Spreading Seas or Sea's Claim could see play as well, but I'm a little bearish on those. Throw in Molten/Stone Rain, and have Wildfire as the way to really finish your opponent's board.
I'm not sure the critters you'd want. Snapcaster Mage is almost certainly wanted, but Magnivore is probably not good enough for the format. Maybe ax Wildfire and run Delver, hoping to flip 2nd turn and go on the beatdown while beating them in the tempo game?
Deck seems a little half-baked, but prob. the best I can come up with for Modern LD.
Blood Moon is bad. It can be slow, expensive, a tempo loss, card disadvantage, and ineffective; not the hallmarks of a good answer to manabases greedier than a Goldman Sachs executive. So while you pay three mana, a card, and alter your deck (or deck choice) to be able to utilize the might of Blood Moon...Jund shrugs, fetches basic Swamps/Forests beforehand and has Deathrite Shaman to smooth things over. It's just not devastating in the way Wasteland, PoP, Back to Basics or whatever are.
The reason why these manabases are bad is because they limit deck diversity and push the format towards goodstuff piles. Deck weak to certain things? Don't bother changing your deck, just splash a fourth color and add in the goodstuff you need. Four color Jund being the prime example.
I like a lot of D. Alexander Gregory pieces, Femeref Enchantress, Unfulfilled Desires, and Fith Edition Seraph among my favorites. But even I can't defend Lili 3.0. It's not so much that she's ugly blah blah beauty standards blah, but that her proportions look like some sort of half bird, half person. Freaky.
But don't talk smack 'bout Chandra 3.0. DOSE CHUN LI THIGHS!
First of all, "women hating this card due to it being geeky instead of demeaning" is a weak strawman that does nothing to address the issue at hand.
Strawman? It's true, bro. I wish it weren't, because it would be awesome to be seen like Tim Tebow for playing a children's card game, but that ain't the truth. Chicks tend to be repelled by this stuff for a whole host of reasons.
*cue gaggle of people with tired refrain of "BUT ITZ BECUZ MAGIC PLAYERS R SEXIST AND NOT WELCOMING TO THE FRAGILE LITTLE FLOWERS THAT ARE WOMEN"*
Second, you seem to hate feminism despite not really understanding it. Can you explain why "the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men" is a bad idea?
I understand feminism perfectly well. I think it's all wrong because it comes from some false premise of equality between the sexes. Men and women aren't equal, there are significant differences rooted in biology, and all of this is very easy to see in human behavior assuming you got a modicum of social awareness. And no, it's no just all "a social construct".
Thread once again confirms that a bunch of Magic players are a bunch of low-T, beta males who grovel to feminist dogma. Protip, most women would hate this card art because it is geeky, kitschy, and of a subject most aren't interested in; fantasy combat. Not because it "reinforces socio-cultural notions of patriarchal dominance" or whatever PoMo bull**** that the feminists professional malcontents in X-Studies departments are puking up these days.
About Vapor Snag: No one could run what is essentially an Unsummon if there wasn't some way to A.) Recoup the card disadvantage and B.) Capitalize on the tempo generated by it. What a surprise, Snapcaster helps to do both, making Vapor Snag playable in the Standard format (that, and the high density of LOLCANTBELIEVETTHEYPRINTEDTHIS aggressive Blue card, e.g. Delver, Geist, Stalker).
This pretty much solidifies the fact that Wizards staff has no idea about power levels of cards whatsoever. Anyone who saw Snapcaster Mage knew it was going to be the stone cold nuts; I bet everyone in the Sally spoiler thread was calling it. A sizeable number of this cru also pointed out that paintin' it Blue was a big no-no, as Red paint would have been much better suited.
And lollin' hard at Mana Leak being "too powerful". It's not Mana Leak Wizardsbros, it's the fact they printed extremely efficient Blue dudes, many of whom have Hexproof (godawful replacement for Shroud), all in one block, and had bonkers equipment ready to go in their hands. That'll give rise to bull**** Blue tempo strategies in Standard, not the presence of what is, at best, a solid early game counterspell. Blue shouldn't have good threats, that's why it is allowed to have good stuff like Mana Leak to survive to the long game. But Delver, Stalker, Geist, and Snappy all become legitimate threats, especially with a sword or two. Wizards needs to get over their critter-boner, or else they'll have to keep pruning the spell parts of colors and further eroding the defining differences down to nothing more than the duders each part of the pie swings with and how they kill duders.
Solution: fire just about everyone at Wizards, get trained monkeys to fling **** at a few card designs to pick the *winners*. Results will likely be comparable.
Condoms. You never know when you are going to need a rubber, or when someone else will. You may even get a Force of Will for one. Make sure to have plenty of different sizes.
Goyf is not that good in Limited. Goyf will probably be a 3/4 in most games (creature, sorcery, instant in the 'yard) and he's a vanilla dude who can be chumped/walled/deathtouched/removed all day long. I wouldn't want him at Uncommon, because things could get a little silly there (mostly making Green highly splashable), but he would be fine at rare. He's no bomb, and not worthy of being pushed to Mythic. This was solely a "financial" decision by Wizards. They don't want Modern too cheap because it cannibalizes demand for Standard/Current-Set-Limited.
My guess is she'll show up in a flash-in-the-pan deck from someone like Conley Woods, but never be a big player in the meta. At least she isn't Tibalt...
See, Wizards wants an Eternal format, but they don't want it too accessible. Then it competes with Standard and Limited, their big cash cows. Imagine if one Standard/Limited season was godawful, and Modern or Legacy were easily accessible. They'd lose out on so much revenue from committed Magic players, stores would be stocked full of unwanted product, and the game would be in dire straits.
Just as others have said, and I repeat, Wizards wants you playing Standard and Limited. Say it again folks....
Wizards wants you playing Standard and Limited.
But speculators...well, I have no love for them, whose desire for dual-backed retirement savings impacts my ability to enjoy a large Legacy playerbase and the fruits of such. I have duals, Forces, LEDs, Karakas, and the like. I don't care if they plummet, because I would much rather they retain use-value at the expense of cash value. I didn't buy my Windswept Heaths at some figure much lower than what they are at now to try and beat the returns I could get on stocks or other equities, I bought them to play decks in tournaments, and because of the rapid increase in Legacy prices, driven by speculation and a "THEY'LL NEVER GO DOWN!" mindset (now where have I heard that before?) there is less Legacy participation, less competition (no, playing against budget Burn, Infect, Affinity, and the like is not all that fun after awhile), and I get less utility from the cards I bought.
The cardboard isn't just what Wizards is selling; they're also selling the expectation that this cardboard can be used to have a lot of fun with in organized play, that a solid structure will exist for it. I'm feeling cheated when this isn't happening, even if my net worth is probably only positive because of my goddamn children's card game purchases years back.
Bottom line, if you want to collect, I'm with you. But if you want to be a speculator-player, well your interests are opposite mine...and I "have the cards", so this isn't the "ur spoiled blah blah".
Plow Under (and Green) isn't the direction I'd take for LD. First up, you want the two best pseudo-LD spells in the format: Boomerang and Eye of Nowhere, because they are versatile and cost two mana. One of them is also an instant. Spreading Seas or Sea's Claim could see play as well, but I'm a little bearish on those. Throw in Molten/Stone Rain, and have Wildfire as the way to really finish your opponent's board.
I'm not sure the critters you'd want. Snapcaster Mage is almost certainly wanted, but Magnivore is probably not good enough for the format. Maybe ax Wildfire and run Delver, hoping to flip 2nd turn and go on the beatdown while beating them in the tempo game?
Deck seems a little half-baked, but prob. the best I can come up with for Modern LD.
The reason why these manabases are bad is because they limit deck diversity and push the format towards goodstuff piles. Deck weak to certain things? Don't bother changing your deck, just splash a fourth color and add in the goodstuff you need. Four color Jund being the prime example.
But don't talk smack 'bout Chandra 3.0. DOSE CHUN LI THIGHS!
Strawman? It's true, bro. I wish it weren't, because it would be awesome to be seen like Tim Tebow for playing a children's card game, but that ain't the truth. Chicks tend to be repelled by this stuff for a whole host of reasons.
*cue gaggle of people with tired refrain of "BUT ITZ BECUZ MAGIC PLAYERS R SEXIST AND NOT WELCOMING TO THE FRAGILE LITTLE FLOWERS THAT ARE WOMEN"*
I understand feminism perfectly well. I think it's all wrong because it comes from some false premise of equality between the sexes. Men and women aren't equal, there are significant differences rooted in biology, and all of this is very easy to see in human behavior assuming you got a modicum of social awareness. And no, it's no just all "a social construct".
Infraction for Ignoring a Mod's Request
feministsprofessional malcontents in X-Studies departments are puking up these days.Get real people, y'all gettin' trolled hard.
Spam WArning
And lollin' hard at Mana Leak being "too powerful". It's not Mana Leak Wizardsbros, it's the fact they printed extremely efficient Blue dudes, many of whom have Hexproof (godawful replacement for Shroud), all in one block, and had bonkers equipment ready to go in their hands. That'll give rise to bull**** Blue tempo strategies in Standard, not the presence of what is, at best, a solid early game counterspell. Blue shouldn't have good threats, that's why it is allowed to have good stuff like Mana Leak to survive to the long game. But Delver, Stalker, Geist, and Snappy all become legitimate threats, especially with a sword or two. Wizards needs to get over their critter-boner, or else they'll have to keep pruning the spell parts of colors and further eroding the defining differences down to nothing more than the duders each part of the pie swings with and how they kill duders.
Solution: fire just about everyone at Wizards, get trained monkeys to fling **** at a few card designs to pick the *winners*. Results will likely be comparable.