I come to MTGSalvation during spoiler season for 2 reasons; it's the best rumor site around, and I love reading how bad people are at card evaluations. This set isn't even in the bottom 3/4 of all Magic sets, and anyone arguing otherwise is only going to prove how very little they know about how to make sets that are successful by ACTUAL metrics, not by the metric of saying "these cards are stupid, set sucks". Theros was incredibly popular, added cards to multiple formats, and is more than carrying its weight (%) in Standard. I don't understand why some people can't figure out that WotC is much better at making Magic cards than these average whiny posters who usually haven't even played the game long enough to know WHY something is good, let alone WHEN.
I must tell you guys, I appreciate the respectful and mature tone everyone is taking in here. Well played, and a nice change of pace for the internet.
At first, even though I was really excited by the flavor of the DFCs, I was kind of hesitant about how it would feel to play with them. I always use opaque sleeves, and I hate the feel of shuffling without them, but I thought it would get a little tedious to be taking the card out of the sleeve over and over in a game. But after thinking about it, I'll buy a few packs of clear Ultra Pro sleeves and keep my DFCs in those. I'll use the checklist cards, because after all they are just a tool like anything else in this game. The immense amount of wonderful flavor we've seen in this set so far seems worth it to me to know that I'll be doing no more work during a game than I normally do; reaching into my card box and pulling out DFCs where I would normally be pulling out tokens to throw into play.
As someone who has taught dozens of people how to play Magic over the years (playing since '95), I can say that these shouldn't be very hard to teach to new players. Everyone I've shown DFCs to has understood immediately how they worked, thanks in part to the clever little "Transform" button in the Wizards previews. The people who have the questions are always the established players, and they are almost always rules questions regarding if it's a new card, does it keep counters/enchantments, etc. New (or newer) players haven't run into those types of situations enough to think to ask about them I assume, but that makes it very easy for them to understand how it happens in the game. In case you're curious, the non-players in this little impromptu experiment are people that I showed the cards because of flavor.
As a person who has always loved the horror genre with a passion, I am excited to use these cards and see the world they helped build. If it's just the principle of the matter that's making you want to quit, I suppose there is nothing to argue for or against; almost any change you see as personally jarring you can find grounds to quit over. Personally, I like to keep a positive outlook on these things. I have a little trouble with the draft concept, but I'm certainly willing to give it a try and I won't be quitting any time soon over it. For those interested, I'm normally a Spike/Johnny, but this set has me searching every card for every little nuance of flavor I can find... so I guess I'm a Spike/Vorthos/Johnny for now
Lol @ the people saying no good cards have been spoiled. Not only will the format be different in ways we can't really predict, but there have been a ton of good cards spoiled already. I'd start at Liliana, and if you can't figure out why she's good, work backwards from there. Stromkirk is already on the level of Slith Firewalker, but then gets a blocking restriction for the opponent on top of that. Do you really need to be told that a 1/1 for 1 that gets bigger every time he hits is good?
I'm really shocked at the level of detail the complainers are getting into this time around. Fight is perfect on almost every level for this mechanic, and hopefully keywording will mean it will show up more often. It's short, it's a verb, it has a very broad meaning to cover many different levels of flavor, and it's simple to translate. Any of the suggestions are light years worse than fights...
Any supply of these that a store gets will be for the release/prerelease parties, and won't be enough to supply any real number of people with checklists for any considerable amount of time. The real reason that SCG is selling checklists (other than the cards being a physical commodity) is that, believe it or not, there are some people that will need to buy them. Shocking, I know. People will buy singles and some of them will be double-faced cards they'd like to have checklists for. This is not an example of SCG "taking advantage" of a situation, this is just business as normal. I assure you, I'll be selling the checklists after the release parties, just like I do with tokens, basic lands, and any other cards that people ask to buy from me on a regular basis in my store. Any other conspiracy theories you'd like to get off your chest while I'm here?
To Saito, I say good riddance. The game doesn't want you, and doesn't need you. The best thing I can hope for is that he's too ashamed to come back to the game that gave him any fame in the first place.
As for living on $30K a year, I wonder how much of a failure someone would have to be to not be able to live on that. I've never in my life made more than $18K a year and I am far from destitute. I live in an apartment, have a car that is paid off, and am doing just fine. Saito, on top of whatever bonus money, ran a game store (which is where I'm sure he was able to procure most of his cards) and was being paid to travel and see the world. Oh, how rough it must have been.
I'm glad that the duals are reprinted, I like for everyone to have as low a barrier of entry as possible. What I'm really excited about is getting to play will all these old cards, many of which I haven't seen in years! They made a lot of great decisions in this set. I have no idea what format needs this or that to be accurate to paper or anything like that, but I know that there are a ton of cards there that will make some crazy games of casual online, and I'm very happy about that.
These are fantastic! I really hope people support these and products like them in the future, they are great value products and get more people playing more varied formats. Of course, I can see the red one outselling the white one 10-1, but still
Is the Masticore really that good in a deck that can't draw extra cards to discard to him? And how many Creatures would you consider being enough to reliably activate his ability?
I expect the Masticore to control the state of the game while he is out on his own, let alone while wearing a Collar. I can't substantiate it (having not tested him yet, since I haven't finished the deck), but it seems fantastic to me. He survives things the old Masticore never could (having DoJ in the format instead of Wrath), and is a valuable colorless source against Kor Firewalker. He is a better finisher than the old Masticore since he can target players, and helps activate Metalcraft if people are looking to use it (Mox Opal, Etched Champion, and Galvanic Blast have all crossed my mind). As with deck's that highlighted him in the past, it often isn't about drawing extra cards to negate his drawback, it's about him costing your opponent more cards than he's eating from you. If you can draw extra cards, then that's all good too I would worry about testing him with 10 or fewer creatures (including him) in red, since there's so much burn anyhow, but I'm thinking the deck will probably center at about 15-18, which is plenty. In green or blue, he would most likely end up carrying more of the removal load on his shoulders, so you'd want more.
Why don't you guys just run Spawning Breath over Pyretic Ritual? It still leads to T3 Koth and can kill a Birds or other x/1.
This guy is my hero, he sifted through tons of bad arguments (even when they were correct) and bad cards, and dropped a gem in our laps. Will it be good enough? I don't know, but I'm far more willing to try this than I am to try Pyretic Ritual. If you guys want your arguments to be taken seriously, try to avoid anecdotal evidence and Magical Christmas hands.
I've been looking at Big Red for several days now, and the more I look I'm not actually sure if I want to get a turn 3 or 4 Koth against a lot of decks. All this arguing about how to defend Koth against RDW is easy to solve. You don't cast him on turn 3, he's a loser in that matchup. Koth can't save you, he can't even save himself.
And what's with the big goal of casting Destructive Force, to kill your lands so Koth is crappy? I get that DF is a great card, but Koth doesn't seem like a card that will get better by nuking lands on both sides of the board. If you don't have another Mountain to lay (or have one left), you can't even add counters to him. If you want to make a DF deck work, take a look at Kai's 99' World Champion deck, there's a lot to learn there, despite how different Magic plays now.
In this deckstyle, Koth should be viewed as a bigger, more powerful Pyretic Ritual that happens to trade off the natural card disadvantage by being a possible alternate win condition for the late game. If your opponent is stumbling early, you could throw him down and try to choke out threats faster, if you wish. Sometimes it will work out (If your opp is UW and doesn't have the counter), sometimes it won't (Your opp gets his huge creatures and red can't deal with them). Overall though, I'd much rather throw down a Cyclops Gladiator or Masticore to eat anything smaller my opponent was laying to try and catch back up. When I'm losing early, Koth doesn't help me catch up; stopping my opponent's creatures does. Koth really doesn't do that for several turns after he comes out. You can count his mana ability as doing that, but your answer shouldn't be that expensive to do if it's reliable in the first place (Otherwise you'd have to rely on Koth, a recipe for disaster). So, I don't think I really have any reason to cast him early, and therefore I don't have a reason to run 4. I'm thinking 2 looks like the right number for me.
With all the creatures that throw burn around that people have mentioned (although I don't remember anyone mentioning the amazing new Masticore), I'm pretty sure that both Basilisk Collar and Cunning Sparkmage have a place in the deck. Of course, since we have so much of the new set yet to see, I'm sure that this deck will change a lot. So we're probably all arguing for nothing
The only reason that this card won't see much play is because the whole format will be bent to killing artifacts, to a degree based on the overall power of SoM. Millstone's main problem was always that playing it early meant you usually spent your mana defending yourself and didn't have the mana open to mill for the next several turns. You need that time to charge it up now, but not having to pay to actually activate it is a huge bonus. I'll at least try it in the new format, after all UW control is a pretty strong strategy right now.
As for the people complaining about this being rare, or hoping they don't get one in limited, you need to reevaluate this card. Sure, it won't be expensive or anything, but this is a very powerful card for controlling strategies in limited, and for the right deck I'd be more than happy to open one (or hopefully more).
What are you guys crying about, this is exactly what I want my mythics to look like! A card with a big-concept effect that doesn't go in very many decks, but when you match it to the deck it goes in, it's great... that's sort of the definition of non-utility. This is how it should be! It has no chance to see play in constructed (at least with the SoM spoiled so far), but has a fairly unique effect in standard, combined with it being a mythic, will keep the price right where it should probably be, around $6.
Wow, all of today's cards look awesome. Leonin Arbiter will play a huge role in every format, and looks like a powerful answer to people having too much search in formats. Myrderball is exactly the kind of fun card I love in casual decks, especially ones filled with Mousers from TMNT. Galvanic Blast is amazing burn, and pretty frightening to think of alongside Lightning Bolt. The new Masticore looks like he'll be even better than the original, he can burn players and it's a lot cheaper to burn out creatures! He even helps you fill your graveyard to do so Kudos Wizards, a great day of previews all the way around!
At first, even though I was really excited by the flavor of the DFCs, I was kind of hesitant about how it would feel to play with them. I always use opaque sleeves, and I hate the feel of shuffling without them, but I thought it would get a little tedious to be taking the card out of the sleeve over and over in a game. But after thinking about it, I'll buy a few packs of clear Ultra Pro sleeves and keep my DFCs in those. I'll use the checklist cards, because after all they are just a tool like anything else in this game. The immense amount of wonderful flavor we've seen in this set so far seems worth it to me to know that I'll be doing no more work during a game than I normally do; reaching into my card box and pulling out DFCs where I would normally be pulling out tokens to throw into play.
As someone who has taught dozens of people how to play Magic over the years (playing since '95), I can say that these shouldn't be very hard to teach to new players. Everyone I've shown DFCs to has understood immediately how they worked, thanks in part to the clever little "Transform" button in the Wizards previews. The people who have the questions are always the established players, and they are almost always rules questions regarding if it's a new card, does it keep counters/enchantments, etc. New (or newer) players haven't run into those types of situations enough to think to ask about them I assume, but that makes it very easy for them to understand how it happens in the game. In case you're curious, the non-players in this little impromptu experiment are people that I showed the cards because of flavor.
As a person who has always loved the horror genre with a passion, I am excited to use these cards and see the world they helped build. If it's just the principle of the matter that's making you want to quit, I suppose there is nothing to argue for or against; almost any change you see as personally jarring you can find grounds to quit over. Personally, I like to keep a positive outlook on these things. I have a little trouble with the draft concept, but I'm certainly willing to give it a try and I won't be quitting any time soon over it. For those interested, I'm normally a Spike/Johnny, but this set has me searching every card for every little nuance of flavor I can find... so I guess I'm a Spike/Vorthos/Johnny for now
As for living on $30K a year, I wonder how much of a failure someone would have to be to not be able to live on that. I've never in my life made more than $18K a year and I am far from destitute. I live in an apartment, have a car that is paid off, and am doing just fine. Saito, on top of whatever bonus money, ran a game store (which is where I'm sure he was able to procure most of his cards) and was being paid to travel and see the world. Oh, how rough it must have been.
I expect the Masticore to control the state of the game while he is out on his own, let alone while wearing a Collar. I can't substantiate it (having not tested him yet, since I haven't finished the deck), but it seems fantastic to me. He survives things the old Masticore never could (having DoJ in the format instead of Wrath), and is a valuable colorless source against Kor Firewalker. He is a better finisher than the old Masticore since he can target players, and helps activate Metalcraft if people are looking to use it (Mox Opal, Etched Champion, and Galvanic Blast have all crossed my mind). As with deck's that highlighted him in the past, it often isn't about drawing extra cards to negate his drawback, it's about him costing your opponent more cards than he's eating from you. If you can draw extra cards, then that's all good too
This guy is my hero, he sifted through tons of bad arguments (even when they were correct) and bad cards, and dropped a gem in our laps. Will it be good enough? I don't know, but I'm far more willing to try this than I am to try Pyretic Ritual. If you guys want your arguments to be taken seriously, try to avoid anecdotal evidence and Magical Christmas hands.
I've been looking at Big Red for several days now, and the more I look I'm not actually sure if I want to get a turn 3 or 4 Koth against a lot of decks. All this arguing about how to defend Koth against RDW is easy to solve. You don't cast him on turn 3, he's a loser in that matchup. Koth can't save you, he can't even save himself.
And what's with the big goal of casting Destructive Force, to kill your lands so Koth is crappy? I get that DF is a great card, but Koth doesn't seem like a card that will get better by nuking lands on both sides of the board. If you don't have another Mountain to lay (or have one left), you can't even add counters to him. If you want to make a DF deck work, take a look at Kai's 99' World Champion deck, there's a lot to learn there, despite how different Magic plays now.
In this deckstyle, Koth should be viewed as a bigger, more powerful Pyretic Ritual that happens to trade off the natural card disadvantage by being a possible alternate win condition for the late game. If your opponent is stumbling early, you could throw him down and try to choke out threats faster, if you wish. Sometimes it will work out (If your opp is UW and doesn't have the counter), sometimes it won't (Your opp gets his huge creatures and red can't deal with them). Overall though, I'd much rather throw down a Cyclops Gladiator or Masticore to eat anything smaller my opponent was laying to try and catch back up. When I'm losing early, Koth doesn't help me catch up; stopping my opponent's creatures does. Koth really doesn't do that for several turns after he comes out. You can count his mana ability as doing that, but your answer shouldn't be that expensive to do if it's reliable in the first place (Otherwise you'd have to rely on Koth, a recipe for disaster). So, I don't think I really have any reason to cast him early, and therefore I don't have a reason to run 4. I'm thinking 2 looks like the right number for me.
With all the creatures that throw burn around that people have mentioned (although I don't remember anyone mentioning the amazing new Masticore), I'm pretty sure that both Basilisk Collar and Cunning Sparkmage have a place in the deck. Of course, since we have so much of the new set yet to see, I'm sure that this deck will change a lot. So we're probably all arguing for nothing
As for the people complaining about this being rare, or hoping they don't get one in limited, you need to reevaluate this card. Sure, it won't be expensive or anything, but this is a very powerful card for controlling strategies in limited, and for the right deck I'd be more than happy to open one (or hopefully more).
Rosewater said in his last article that there would be no way in the set to remove poison counters. He hates Leeches