I had suggested that on the one of the bigger spoiler threads yesterday and I got told no cause it doesn't follow the leaks
I think it's just wishful thinking. Even if it's perfect manafixing for every color of devotion you have -- even if it's only devotion 1 -- they're completely and utterly unplayable in every format.
Well that's not very exciting. They could have well have spoiled the basic land arts. We know already of Bestow and Heroic so those commons are not breaking news. Is there more planned tonight?
There are always 'unplanned' spoilers during the magic party.
They aren't making any real attempts to hype this set, are they?
At PAX east, they showed us Sigarda and Resto. Modern playable flying beatsticks.
PAX prime? Enjoy your limited trash! At least the 1/1 red dude that makes more 1/1 red dudes is kind of cool. I can play a dynacharge deck at casual FNM, wooo.
The soldier common is pretty cool, the creature enchantment is limited trash but I'd pick it pretty high in a slow format. Would be damn good in M14, that's for sure!
Can we get real spoilers yet please? Spoiler season is already starting a week late, I have no idea why they're leading it off with a bunch of commons.
One of my first events, I saw a kid with bad hands get a game loss because there was a small line between the two 1s in '11 forests', making it look kind of like an 'H'.
The judge doing a deck check gave him a game loss. For that. Despite an obvious lack of intent to cheat, an easy explanation, and literally no potential gain. He appealed to the head judge, and they moved away from the kid and toward my side of the room, where the judge doing the deck check explained the situation. Head judge didn't look at the paper, took the other judge's word on it, and refused the appeal.
Maybe we just have two extremes here -- some judges too lenient, some far too strict and focused on punishing newer (or otherwise disadvantaged players.)
Maybe this rule needs to be rewritten to give out different punishments depending on the effect a mismatched deck registration will have on the game. "Game loss," regardless of how little the player gained from their infraction, is an arbitrary and flawed system.
Looks like at least $30 in value, and it's pretty easy to grab a preorder for $20. Not awful, not good enough for people to profit on -- seems like a fine list.
I'll see if I can work that into my deck, or at least parts of it.
It requires 10 or 12 cards to pull off in some of the silliest versions of the deck, so it's (unfortunately) something you can't shove in somewhere. The good news is, aside from Faith's Reward and Piranha Marsh, they're all pretty good cards on their own!
I had an extremely degenerate deck built, using GWB colors and a generic commander (I went with Ghave, but Doran works just as well... honestly, it doesn't matter) which won with an obscene amount of control, tons of tutoring, and a scapeshift engine whose most common wincon worked something like this:
2: Scapeshift all of your lands. As it's the only absolutely required card for the "combo" (not that the deck doesn't have tons of other ways to win), I strongly recommend running Boseiju to get it off reliably, but the deck could win reliably even if it was countered. Grab some absurd combination of cards that includes ways to produce green mana, lands that draw, cabal coffers, urborg, etc etc....
3: Play draw spells, draw off your lands, and cast tutors until you manage to grab both of the following (again, there were plenty of other ways to win, many of which didn't go infinite, but this is what worked most often)
A: A permanent recursion effect. Eternal Witness works wonders.
B: Faith's Reward or Second Sunrise. This gets all of your lands sacrificed to scapeshift back, as well as all of the creatures/other permanents that hit the GY that turn.
Phyrexian Tower and similar effects really simplify this, but you're building the land deck; you know what to include.
4: Cast the recursion effect. Your mana is effectively infinite, you're absolutely fine here. Use it to get second sunrise back.
5: Activate all of your card draw lands, phyrexian tower and grim backwoods (or carnage altar or whatever, it doesn't matter) away your best recursion effect/CIP effect creatures. Use something like dust bowl or ghost quarter to destroy your pirannah marsh and one of your most prolific mana producing lands... and, if you don't have a dedicated way to sac creatures, at least one creature sacrificing outlet.
6: Second Sunrise or faiths reward.
7: Repeat until each player has died to pirannah marsh.
EDIT: whoops, I misread the post and thought you -were- trying to win degenerately Well, um, you can ignore this, but you should keep the tutoring + scapeshift + faith's reward/second sunrise thing in mind. It's extremely satisfying to pull off.
I like the idea of RUG. maybe the deadeye zealous combo? Clearly i will need to run 4 thragtusks right? unfortunately the chemister cant hit players so probably not him. Oooooo i should run Worldfire shouldn't I? great with thragtusk.
You should likely be running four thraggies, yes. Luckily, a deck with such a high concentration of ramp has no trouble playing them on turn three.
Also, if your win conditions are to be sorcery speed, you -have- to have permission to prevent a blowout from instant speed card draw.
Yes, but that win condition wastes too many deckslots on bad cards and you're going to get blown out of the water by fast aggro decks unless you run some midrange board presence, permission, and/or burn.
I'd suggest RUG; that way you can use much faster win conditions, ones that won't make Thought Scour cost you the game.
EtI's deck should be fairly easy to make, just ramp into Omnisicience, cast Laboratory Maniac, then Thought Scour (targeting you) for the win.
Basically, a Simic deck.
That's the only reasonable argument for the cards being fake at this point; if there's any potent ramp in the next few sets, then having Omnisicence and ETI in the same Standard is very dangerous.
The "can't be countered" spells previewed today aren't control hate. In fact, they're both removal spells that are likely to be the backbone of new control strategies in standard.
They're tempo hate, pure and simple, which is something control players approve of wholeheartedly. When a blue deck can run 4 delver of secrets or swarm the board with spirit tokens, then proceed to leak every removal spell aimed at them, that is NOT FUN.
Having control spells that say "~ can't be countered" is, kind of ironically, the best possible thing that could've happened to control.
I didn't see a thread for any of these commons, which will obviously be very relevant cards for limited. My thoughts:
Eyes in the Skies: 3W seems expensive for two Suntail Hawks, even if they do only cost you one card. I wouldn't be happy running this without 4-5 sources of better tokens it could copy. Am I undervaluing its worth as an instant speed blocker?
Rootborn Defenses: This seems very situational; possibly combos with a board sweeper, but again I'd want a lot of other token makers before running it.
Dead Reveler & Grim Roustabout: These both depend on how good unleash turns out to be. Both of these creatures seem quite inefficient if you don't put the counter on, so they really want to be in an aggro deck that won't ever need them as blockers.
Ogre Jailbreaker: Playable, I think, in either slower black decks or decks that have 3-4 gates/gate fetchers. There seems to be a small "defenders matter" theme that may increase his stock as well.
Axebane Guardian & Gatecreeper Vine: I think these are both playable. The Gatecreeper can grab a gate for mana-fixing and "gates matter" abilities while also powering up the Guardian, and the Guardian could get insane quickly in a deck with 3-4 defenders (especially with 1-2 other Guardians). How much of a valid strategy "defenders" is depends how much efficient control & removal is in black and white.
Auger Spree: Seems solidly first pickable, bomb rares not withstanding. Efficient removal for 4 toughness creatures most of the time and occasionally a surprise finisher. Even gets around regeneration and indestructibility.
Goblin Electromancer: I'd be very happy to run this if I was already leaning Izzet. 2/2 for 2 with a relevant ability is always good.
Sluiceway Scorpion: A 2/2 for CMC 4 in two colors seems overcosted to me, though it does help gum up the ground in decks that need time to reach big threats. I wouldn't want to run it without having enough key scavenge targets.
Rakdos Shred-Freak: The best thing about hybrid cards is being able to use them in decks that are only one of their colors, but I wouldn't want to pay RR or BB for a creature that's only relevant on turn two. Would probably make the cut in only heavily aggro Radkos decks.
Shred-Freak: Spot on. RR, RB, and BB are all fairly restrictive costs for a 1-toughness beatstick. If I were running pure rakdos he would card 20, 21, 22, or 23.... In a three color deck there's just no way I want him.
Scorpion: Disagree. It most certainly is overcosted for what it does, but look at how highly +1/+1 counter effects have been valued in previous formats; Blessings of Nature is a downright bomb. It most certainly is not a first pick, nor does it compare with blessings, but if I'm in those colors it's in my deck 100% of the time. A "scavenge target" is any creature.
Electromancer: Strongly disagree. Prohibitively costed bear, and this is in a format where you will almost certainly need to run 3 colors to have enough playables; look at original RAV block drafting. The ability is rarely if ever going to be relevant. I would dismiss this for the same reasons you dismissed Shred Freak.
Auger Spree: Agree. I'll be first picking these.
Axebane Guardian/Gatecreeper Vine: The former will go in the second half of the pack, the latter in the first half. I honestly think Gatecreeper might be better in this format than Borderland Ranger is in AVR, but creatures with defender weren't exactly useful in RAV.
Jailbreaker: Easily a "second half of the pack" card, in my opinion, as you will want at least four gates to make this good enough. If you have that much consistency, this card is going to be stellar.
Roustabout: Drudge Skeletons might be good if scavenge is as good as I think it is. It's either a bear that can't block or a bad drudge skeletons, both of which could easily be playable, but not picked highly at all.
Rootborn: Not even -slightly- playable.
Eyes in the Skies: If there's other tokens in your deck, it's bonkers. If not, it's mediocre, but I will always be playing this if I'm in white; Midnight Haunting was a high pick.
I think it's just wishful thinking. Even if it's perfect manafixing for every color of devotion you have -- even if it's only devotion 1 -- they're completely and utterly unplayable in every format.
Meteor Crater isn't good.
There are always 'unplanned' spoilers during the magic party.
At PAX east, they showed us Sigarda and Resto. Modern playable flying beatsticks.
PAX prime? Enjoy your limited trash! At least the 1/1 red dude that makes more 1/1 red dudes is kind of cool. I can play a dynacharge deck at casual FNM, wooo.
As-is... I like it, but it certainly isn't amazing. 1/1s aren't enough to get me to run giant growth and auras.
Can we get real spoilers yet please? Spoiler season is already starting a week late, I have no idea why they're leading it off with a bunch of commons.
The judge doing a deck check gave him a game loss. For that. Despite an obvious lack of intent to cheat, an easy explanation, and literally no potential gain. He appealed to the head judge, and they moved away from the kid and toward my side of the room, where the judge doing the deck check explained the situation. Head judge didn't look at the paper, took the other judge's word on it, and refused the appeal.
Maybe we just have two extremes here -- some judges too lenient, some far too strict and focused on punishing newer (or otherwise disadvantaged players.)
Maybe this rule needs to be rewritten to give out different punishments depending on the effect a mismatched deck registration will have on the game. "Game loss," regardless of how little the player gained from their infraction, is an arbitrary and flawed system.
It requires 10 or 12 cards to pull off in some of the silliest versions of the deck, so it's (unfortunately) something you can't shove in somewhere. The good news is, aside from Faith's Reward and Piranha Marsh, they're all pretty good cards on their own!
1: Have candelabra of tawnos, garruk wildspeaker, magus of the candelabra, or any other reliable method of untapping lands out. Lotus Cobra also works extremely well here... I think I had 7-8 slots for this, and you don't even really need it with the right land setup. (If you've got blue in your built, I recommend Amulet of Vigor, honestly.)
2: Scapeshift all of your lands. As it's the only absolutely required card for the "combo" (not that the deck doesn't have tons of other ways to win), I strongly recommend running Boseiju to get it off reliably, but the deck could win reliably even if it was countered. Grab some absurd combination of cards that includes ways to produce green mana, lands that draw, cabal coffers, urborg, etc etc....
3: Play draw spells, draw off your lands, and cast tutors until you manage to grab both of the following (again, there were plenty of other ways to win, many of which didn't go infinite, but this is what worked most often)
A: A permanent recursion effect. Eternal Witness works wonders.
B: Faith's Reward or Second Sunrise. This gets all of your lands sacrificed to scapeshift back, as well as all of the creatures/other permanents that hit the GY that turn.
Phyrexian Tower and similar effects really simplify this, but you're building the land deck; you know what to include.
4: Cast the recursion effect. Your mana is effectively infinite, you're absolutely fine here. Use it to get second sunrise back.
5: Activate all of your card draw lands, phyrexian tower and grim backwoods (or carnage altar or whatever, it doesn't matter) away your best recursion effect/CIP effect creatures. Use something like dust bowl or ghost quarter to destroy your pirannah marsh and one of your most prolific mana producing lands... and, if you don't have a dedicated way to sac creatures, at least one creature sacrificing outlet.
6: Second Sunrise or faiths reward.
7: Repeat until each player has died to pirannah marsh.
EDIT: whoops, I misread the post and thought you -were- trying to win degenerately
You should likely be running four thraggies, yes. Luckily, a deck with such a high concentration of ramp has no trouble playing them on turn three.
Also, if your win conditions are to be sorcery speed, you -have- to have permission to prevent a blowout from instant speed card draw.
I'd suggest RUG; that way you can use much faster win conditions, ones that won't make Thought Scour cost you the game.
That's the only reasonable argument for the cards being fake at this point; if there's any potent ramp in the next few sets, then having Omnisicence and ETI in the same Standard is very dangerous.
Game Day promo means it'll be teaching newbies how to properly evaluate cards all day long though!
You could not possibly be more wrong.
The "can't be countered" spells previewed today aren't control hate. In fact, they're both removal spells that are likely to be the backbone of new control strategies in standard.
They're tempo hate, pure and simple, which is something control players approve of wholeheartedly. When a blue deck can run 4 delver of secrets or swarm the board with spirit tokens, then proceed to leak every removal spell aimed at them, that is NOT FUN.
Having control spells that say "~ can't be countered" is, kind of ironically, the best possible thing that could've happened to control.
Shred-Freak: Spot on. RR, RB, and BB are all fairly restrictive costs for a 1-toughness beatstick. If I were running pure rakdos he would card 20, 21, 22, or 23.... In a three color deck there's just no way I want him.
Scorpion: Disagree. It most certainly is overcosted for what it does, but look at how highly +1/+1 counter effects have been valued in previous formats; Blessings of Nature is a downright bomb. It most certainly is not a first pick, nor does it compare with blessings, but if I'm in those colors it's in my deck 100% of the time. A "scavenge target" is any creature.
Electromancer: Strongly disagree. Prohibitively costed bear, and this is in a format where you will almost certainly need to run 3 colors to have enough playables; look at original RAV block drafting. The ability is rarely if ever going to be relevant. I would dismiss this for the same reasons you dismissed Shred Freak.
Auger Spree: Agree. I'll be first picking these.
Axebane Guardian/Gatecreeper Vine: The former will go in the second half of the pack, the latter in the first half. I honestly think Gatecreeper might be better in this format than Borderland Ranger is in AVR, but creatures with defender weren't exactly useful in RAV.
Jailbreaker: Easily a "second half of the pack" card, in my opinion, as you will want at least four gates to make this good enough. If you have that much consistency, this card is going to be stellar.
Roustabout: Drudge Skeletons might be good if scavenge is as good as I think it is. It's either a bear that can't block or a bad drudge skeletons, both of which could easily be playable, but not picked highly at all.
Rootborn: Not even -slightly- playable.
Eyes in the Skies: If there's other tokens in your deck, it's bonkers. If not, it's mediocre, but I will always be playing this if I'm in white; Midnight Haunting was a high pick.