I used to own a single copy of Force of Will, but my cat peed and pooped on it. I took it to a card store to see if it was still worth anything. The clerk didn't want it because it smelled awful, but a guy came up to me and offered a legends Killer Bees and a Lotus Petal for it. We both felt like we ripped the other guy off because I felt like my card was literal garbage now that it smelled and looked like a litter box, and the other guy felt like he got a Force of Will for next to nothing, even though it was extremely low quality.
Worse one I ever saw was a kid (around age eleven, I think) convincing a grown man to give him a foil Avatar of Woe and Kavu Titan for a fourth edition Lord of the Pit. It's not often you see the kids doing the sharking.
This was from a 4 man chaos game. One guy went to cast Lord of Extinction, and since this was late in the game it was big enough to kill everyone and no one had any blockers left. Lord of Extinction player was also at, like, sixty life or something, so he was set up to win the game eventually. Well, I go and try to cast Scattering Stroke on it, but the player to the left of me used Dismiss on my Scattering Stroke. I was all, "What the hell, man? You aren't in an alliance with him." He just laughed. I passed the turn to him, and he cast Phthisis on Lord of Extinction. Lord of Extinction player lost more than 100 life. The guy to the left of me won that game a couple turns later.
I have hated a couplel cards over the years.
When I first started out, I hated Thran Weaponry because I didn't realize the effect was symmetrical. It costs 10 mana across two turns to make everyone stronger. It would have been fair if it only worked on my guys, but pumping my opponent's dudes too was just insulting. I lost a game from that mistake, and quickly dumped them in my trade binder, where they remain to this day.
Early on I was disappointed with standard when my Invasion block cards rotated out, so I switched to extended for a while. My deck actually wasn't that bad for a newb (g/b reanimator), but I knew nothing of metagame. The dominant extended decks in my area were Stasis and infinite life combos centered around Worthy Cause and Task Force. I didn't mind the life decks since they killed you pretty quick with a bunch of little Soltari guys after they comboed off, if they even bothered to (sometimes they just played like normal white weenie), but playing against Stasis was like watching paint dry on your eyeballs. Every round went to time and even the veterans hated playing against it. What made it worse was that the particular build that was popular at the time only had two win conditions, so you had to wait for the stasis guy to draw them before he could kill you. Keep in mind, this was during a time when scooping was seen as cowardly and heavily discouraged.
I've forgiven Thran Weaponry for being crappy and Stasis for making things take forever, though. The only card that really gets me now is Hymn to Tourach. I mulligan enough already, and accelerated turn 1 Hymns make me feel like I just mulliganed 2 more times.
I wasn't playing standard during Conflux, only playing limited. In addition to what you already mentioned, Exotic Orchard, Might of Alara, Volcanic Fallout, and Hellspark Elemental were popular at the time. Especially Fallout. That and Great Sable Stag in M10 helped end Faerie's reign of terror, which was one of the reasons I wasn't playing standard at the time. I'm too macho to lose against a bunch of faeries (only partially kidding :p).
Hm, maybe conflux did have less impact than Saviors.
Probably Saviors of Kamigawa. The only four cards I remember anyone using were Kami of the Crescent Moon, Ebony Owl Netsuke, Kataki, War's Wage (as a sideboard card against the equipment decks still running around), and Pithing Needle. Actually, the needle, as far as I remember, was also mostly in sideboards, just in everyone's sideboard.
Some people tried to make Twincast and Miren The Moaning Well into decks, but I don't remember it going over so well. I think some people might have used Hand of Honor and Hand of Cruelty too, but, again, I don't recall those going over so well either. Being generous and saying all of those cards were playable, that's 8 cards out of 170, or 4% of the set.
Worse still, only one (The Owl Netsuke) of those cards used any of Saviors of Kamigawa's major keywords or mechanics that were supposed to set it apart from the other two Kamigawa sets. Saviors of Kamigawa, for those who weren't around or don't remember had a hand size theme, a keyword, and two ability words. For the hand size theme, you had cards that cared about how many cards were in each player's hand. That went nowhere except with the Owl Netsuke, which punished players for having large hands, the opposite of what the set was trying to accomplish.
The set's special keyword was Epic, and it only appeared on five cards. It was a terrible idea because it kept you from casing any other spells for the rest of the game in exchange for getting a free copy every upkeep. While all five have been played in casual, none were played in standard. This mechanic was all over the set's advertising in magazines with the tagline "If you could only cast one spell, what would it be?"
The two ability words were Channel and Sweep. Cards with Channel let you discard them for a usually marginal effect. So, it was kind of like cycling if you got something else instead of drawing a card. All of them were essentially fodder for limited. Shinen of Flight's Wings is a typical card with Channel. Sweep was an ability that went on instants and sorceries that let you bounce your lands to scale their effect. Some of them looked good on paper, but unless they won you the game right there, you were left with a hand full of land. The closest one to playable was probably Charge Across The Araba. Savior's themes were the least relevant since Prophecy's ill-conceived "let's see if we can get people to willingly ditch all their lands" theme.
1. Rorix. He wins games out of nowhere and fits perfectly at the top of most of my mono-red decks' curves.
2. Silvos. He's big and hard to kill. Harder to kill now, more-so than back then now that anti-regeneration removal is less common.
3. Arcanis isn't too good for attacking, but the card draw is awesome. I used to use him with Puppeteer in a wizard deck to draw 6 or more cards each turn. It was pretty crushing if you could pull it off. Only thing I don't like about him is that he draws a lot of fire, so you either have to save up some counterspells to protect him or wait until you have 10 mana so you can bounce him if your opponents try to kill him.
4. Jareth. I was never all that impressed with him. I always wished he was a 7/4 instead of a 4/7. The high toughness seems redundant with the protection ability.
5. Visara. As others have said, Avatar or Woe was already around. Also, since she has both a tap ability and high power, you feel conflicted as to whether you want to attack or kill stuff. It can even turn into a sort of "New player trap". I've seen less experienced players lose games because they decided to kill stuff when attacking for 5 in the air (or 6 with fear if using Avatar) would have been lethal. I still like her for the artwork, though. I think she's pretty.
I once did an experiment with my brother over whether it was better to have a deck with high threat density and very little acceleration/card drawing or one with few win conditions and tons of card drawing and acceleration. Neither deck used much removal, but the low density one had some low power blockers in it.
The low threat density deck was blue-green. It's only win condition was 4 Mahamoti Djinn. It's other creatures were Sakura-Tribe Elder and Glacial Wall. It had a bunch of cheap card-drawing too.
The low threat density deck won slightly more often, but not by much. It's biggest advantage was being able to dig through mana floods and find lands when mana-screwed (mana problems plagued the high density deck). Occasionally, though, it would just be overpowered by too many attackers.
Don't take this as an end-all be-all answer, though. Me and my brother aren't exactly pros. Those decks were both terrible, but it was an interesting experiment.
Yeah, blue even has a couple effects that aren't even restricted by creature type in Grand Architect and Sunken City. Sunken City is terrible, though. I used to play it in an Homarid Spawning Bed deck it was almost always dead because of the upkeep. Either it won on the following attack step or it was nearly useless.
Anyway, all colors get effects like this in some form or another. That's because all colors, even blue, have small creature decks (often referred to as a weenie rush deck) and creature decks get a lot better when they have mass pump effects. Wizards wants you to play creature decks most the time. Stuff like making a bunch of lords or anthem effects is supposed to nudge you in that direction. Seeing a bunch of good blue lords is no more unusual than a bunch of good black or red lords. Now if they made a blue Overrun, then I would be concerned about the color pie and blue getting too much mass pump.
Road/Runner
Road- 3RR Sorcery. Gain control of target land (you don't have to give it back).
Runner- 3RR Sorcery. Put a creature from your hand onto the battlefield. It gains haste until end of turn. Return it to its owner's hand at end of turn.
Kibble/Bits
Kibble- G Sorcery- Put a +1/+1 counter on each Hound you control. They gain trample until end of turn.
Bits- 1W Sorcery- Destroy target nonland permanent with converted mana cost 1 or less.
Blood/Gore
Blood- 1B Instant. Regenerate target creature. You lose 1 life. Draw a card.
Gore- 2RInstant. Untap target creature. It cannot tap until end of turn and must block or be blocked this turn if able.
I'm using gore as a verb, like, "He was gored by a bull".
I'm not getting my hopes up for anything anywhere near as good as LotR, movie-wise. It'll probably be watchable, though. I'd actually be okay even if it ends up as bad as the DnD movie because I actually like bad movies because me and my friend like to mock them and throw popcorn at the TV (DnD was great for this. I think we watched it five times before I lost my copy). The worst case scenario would be that it's boring and forgettable, in that nasty spot where it's not good enough to be a good movie, but not bad enough to be a fun bad movie.
I asked the vague question "Will the future be cool?" using a junky life-gain deck.
1. Martyr of Sands is my past. Not sure what to make of it, and the flavor text always confused me. Strong-weak life?
2. Plains is my state of mind. Yeah, I'm thinking pretty plainly.
3. Path to Exile is my home. I'm scared now.
4. Another Martyr of Sands represents me. Am I going to die?
5. Wing Shards represents a person who is important to me. Wing Shards has storm and makes people sacrifice stuff. That doesn't sound pleasant at all.
6. My destination is another Plains. I'm going nowhere aren't I?
7. Path to Exile is my future. So, the future sounds like I'm going to die and maybe get exiled from somewhere. That's not cool at all. If this opening wasn't full of removal and a decent curve, I would want a mulligan just because the fortune makes me sound like I'm screwed. I'm glad I don't take this seriously.
On the lands in front bit, I have a friend who does that, and when I asked him why, he said it was because he learned to play from a computer program in the late 90's, and the computer always put the lands in front. I think whatever program that was may be the source of that.
My pet peeve is when people listen to music while playing and I have to tell them to pull out their ear things every time I want to tell them something. Sometimes they'll just put it in one ear, which is still sort of rude, but at least they can still hear me most of the time, so I can handle that.
Imagine for a minute that there was a dragon that was so big that humans were like microbes to him. I'll call him Dracoplane. He's so big, there are cities and forests and entire civilizations inside his body and on his skin, and he isn't aware of any of it, just like how we (humans) aren't aware of all the microbes in our bodies and on our skin. Just wondering, how would you express a creature this big?
I've had an idea, but it would involve making him out of nonbasic lands (because his body parts are big enough to be lands) and then they all turn into one creature but can still tap for mana separately when you have the right amount of each of them of them, but I'm not sure how to go about doing this. What do you guys think? Can you think of a better way to express a creature this big? I mean, without just saying it's a 40/40 or something, like he's too big for a single card.
You guys ever play Xenoblade Chronicles? It would be kind of like figuring out a way to summon The Bionis.
Worse one I ever saw was a kid (around age eleven, I think) convincing a grown man to give him a foil Avatar of Woe and Kavu Titan for a fourth edition Lord of the Pit. It's not often you see the kids doing the sharking.
When I first started out, I hated Thran Weaponry because I didn't realize the effect was symmetrical. It costs 10 mana across two turns to make everyone stronger. It would have been fair if it only worked on my guys, but pumping my opponent's dudes too was just insulting. I lost a game from that mistake, and quickly dumped them in my trade binder, where they remain to this day.
Early on I was disappointed with standard when my Invasion block cards rotated out, so I switched to extended for a while. My deck actually wasn't that bad for a newb (g/b reanimator), but I knew nothing of metagame. The dominant extended decks in my area were Stasis and infinite life combos centered around Worthy Cause and Task Force. I didn't mind the life decks since they killed you pretty quick with a bunch of little Soltari guys after they comboed off, if they even bothered to (sometimes they just played like normal white weenie), but playing against Stasis was like watching paint dry on your eyeballs. Every round went to time and even the veterans hated playing against it. What made it worse was that the particular build that was popular at the time only had two win conditions, so you had to wait for the stasis guy to draw them before he could kill you. Keep in mind, this was during a time when scooping was seen as cowardly and heavily discouraged.
I've forgiven Thran Weaponry for being crappy and Stasis for making things take forever, though. The only card that really gets me now is Hymn to Tourach. I mulligan enough already, and accelerated turn 1 Hymns make me feel like I just mulliganed 2 more times.
I wasn't playing standard during Conflux, only playing limited. In addition to what you already mentioned, Exotic Orchard, Might of Alara, Volcanic Fallout, and Hellspark Elemental were popular at the time. Especially Fallout. That and Great Sable Stag in M10 helped end Faerie's reign of terror, which was one of the reasons I wasn't playing standard at the time. I'm too macho to lose against a bunch of faeries (only partially kidding :p).
Hm, maybe conflux did have less impact than Saviors.
Some people tried to make Twincast and Miren The Moaning Well into decks, but I don't remember it going over so well. I think some people might have used Hand of Honor and Hand of Cruelty too, but, again, I don't recall those going over so well either. Being generous and saying all of those cards were playable, that's 8 cards out of 170, or 4% of the set.
Worse still, only one (The Owl Netsuke) of those cards used any of Saviors of Kamigawa's major keywords or mechanics that were supposed to set it apart from the other two Kamigawa sets. Saviors of Kamigawa, for those who weren't around or don't remember had a hand size theme, a keyword, and two ability words. For the hand size theme, you had cards that cared about how many cards were in each player's hand. That went nowhere except with the Owl Netsuke, which punished players for having large hands, the opposite of what the set was trying to accomplish.
The set's special keyword was Epic, and it only appeared on five cards. It was a terrible idea because it kept you from casing any other spells for the rest of the game in exchange for getting a free copy every upkeep. While all five have been played in casual, none were played in standard. This mechanic was all over the set's advertising in magazines with the tagline "If you could only cast one spell, what would it be?"
The two ability words were Channel and Sweep. Cards with Channel let you discard them for a usually marginal effect. So, it was kind of like cycling if you got something else instead of drawing a card. All of them were essentially fodder for limited. Shinen of Flight's Wings is a typical card with Channel. Sweep was an ability that went on instants and sorceries that let you bounce your lands to scale their effect. Some of them looked good on paper, but unless they won you the game right there, you were left with a hand full of land. The closest one to playable was probably Charge Across The Araba. Savior's themes were the least relevant since Prophecy's ill-conceived "let's see if we can get people to willingly ditch all their lands" theme.
2. Silvos. He's big and hard to kill. Harder to kill now, more-so than back then now that anti-regeneration removal is less common.
3. Arcanis isn't too good for attacking, but the card draw is awesome. I used to use him with Puppeteer in a wizard deck to draw 6 or more cards each turn. It was pretty crushing if you could pull it off. Only thing I don't like about him is that he draws a lot of fire, so you either have to save up some counterspells to protect him or wait until you have 10 mana so you can bounce him if your opponents try to kill him.
4. Jareth. I was never all that impressed with him. I always wished he was a 7/4 instead of a 4/7. The high toughness seems redundant with the protection ability.
5. Visara. As others have said, Avatar or Woe was already around. Also, since she has both a tap ability and high power, you feel conflicted as to whether you want to attack or kill stuff. It can even turn into a sort of "New player trap". I've seen less experienced players lose games because they decided to kill stuff when attacking for 5 in the air (or 6 with fear if using Avatar) would have been lethal. I still like her for the artwork, though. I think she's pretty.
The high threat density deck was a mono-green deck with stuff like Blastoderm, Concordant Crossroads, Rogue Elephant, and Leatherback Baloth. Nearly every creature had more power than CMC.
The low threat density deck was blue-green. It's only win condition was 4 Mahamoti Djinn. It's other creatures were Sakura-Tribe Elder and Glacial Wall. It had a bunch of cheap card-drawing too.
The low threat density deck won slightly more often, but not by much. It's biggest advantage was being able to dig through mana floods and find lands when mana-screwed (mana problems plagued the high density deck). Occasionally, though, it would just be overpowered by too many attackers.
Don't take this as an end-all be-all answer, though. Me and my brother aren't exactly pros. Those decks were both terrible, but it was an interesting experiment.
Anyway, all colors get effects like this in some form or another. That's because all colors, even blue, have small creature decks (often referred to as a weenie rush deck) and creature decks get a lot better when they have mass pump effects. Wizards wants you to play creature decks most the time. Stuff like making a bunch of lords or anthem effects is supposed to nudge you in that direction. Seeing a bunch of good blue lords is no more unusual than a bunch of good black or red lords. Now if they made a blue Overrun, then I would be concerned about the color pie and blue getting too much mass pump.
Road- 3RR Sorcery. Gain control of target land (you don't have to give it back).
Runner- 3RR Sorcery. Put a creature from your hand onto the battlefield. It gains haste until end of turn. Return it to its owner's hand at end of turn.
Kibble/Bits
Kibble- G Sorcery- Put a +1/+1 counter on each Hound you control. They gain trample until end of turn.
Bits- 1W Sorcery- Destroy target nonland permanent with converted mana cost 1 or less.
Blood/Gore
Blood- 1B Instant. Regenerate target creature. You lose 1 life. Draw a card.
Gore- 2RInstant. Untap target creature. It cannot tap until end of turn and must block or be blocked this turn if able.
I'm using gore as a verb, like, "He was gored by a bull".
I'm actually pretty optimistic about this.
1. Martyr of Sands is my past. Not sure what to make of it, and the flavor text always confused me. Strong-weak life?
2. Plains is my state of mind. Yeah, I'm thinking pretty plainly.
3. Path to Exile is my home. I'm scared now.
4. Another Martyr of Sands represents me. Am I going to die?
5. Wing Shards represents a person who is important to me. Wing Shards has storm and makes people sacrifice stuff. That doesn't sound pleasant at all.
6. My destination is another Plains. I'm going nowhere aren't I?
7. Path to Exile is my future. So, the future sounds like I'm going to die and maybe get exiled from somewhere. That's not cool at all. If this opening wasn't full of removal and a decent curve, I would want a mulligan just because the fortune makes me sound like I'm screwed. I'm glad I don't take this seriously.
My pet peeve is when people listen to music while playing and I have to tell them to pull out their ear things every time I want to tell them something. Sometimes they'll just put it in one ear, which is still sort of rude, but at least they can still hear me most of the time, so I can handle that.
I've had an idea, but it would involve making him out of nonbasic lands (because his body parts are big enough to be lands) and then they all turn into one creature but can still tap for mana separately when you have the right amount of each of them of them, but I'm not sure how to go about doing this. What do you guys think? Can you think of a better way to express a creature this big? I mean, without just saying it's a 40/40 or something, like he's too big for a single card.
You guys ever play Xenoblade Chronicles? It would be kind of like figuring out a way to summon The Bionis.