i hate, HATE that its starting to feel like every other block is going the Eldrazi way. where you get 2 ON THEME set and then a third set that DOES NOTHING to add to the current theme. is more about rares and high powered uncommons and less about balance. And basically discards the foundations that were put together with the previous sets.
The worst part was that the blocks affected were my favorite planes in MTG, Zendikar and Innistrad. and while Eldrazi wasnt THAT awful, it could be said that only the level up mechanic was bad, Avacyn Restored was just plain AWFUL.
Only a few cards were any good, alot of the rest were just trash not worth the ink printed on them. There was total bias to color support (white got WAAAAY too much). only one of the mechanics turned out ok and felt balanced (spiritbond was good, Miracle was just bad and was made for luck sacks and scry.).
thinking about it now just brings up some pretty bad feelings now. it would be nice to go back to them, if only to correct those awful mistakes.
That doesn't make any sense to me, tribal decks still happen regularly. Almost every standard I remember had some viable build of themed, or tribal deck.
Faeries was the dominating deck during late lorwyn/shadowmoor standard, and on through shards.
Eldrazi green was an elf-based ramp deck that continued through scars block. The shell stayed viable through rotation, thanks to the elf lord being in the core set. (see craterhoof elves).
Infect decks were viable after NPH.
Delver decks had a spirit sub-theme for a while.
Zombies was a very competitive deck after dark ascension was released.
Human reanimatorwas massive during the release of rtr block.
Craterhoof elves was a thing in the last standard rotation.
and humans is a very competitive deck at the moment.
That is the past 7 odd years of standard, with the Jund era being the only without representation that I remember.
idk, i didnt like humans AT ALL. 1/1 token gens were so boring and binary, ugh. same happened with spirits, just even worse cause they could fly. I was pissed how alot of the more thematic and interesting tribes got the shaft. I mean look what they did with werewolves and Allies. interesting mechanics or themes that were built well and were fun and cool then quickly discarded. And dont even get me started on ninjas. seriously, WTF?! making an asian style plane and you barely bother with ninjas? oughta be castrated. Only 2 decks i liked last few standards and that was interesting were in fact infect and blue green dredge. and while infect was one of those things you always sometimes had 50/50 chance of playing and winning, Wizards horribly designed their blocks in such a way that blue green dredge could NEVER do anything because of the OVERABUNDANCE of grave hate. seriously, i swear they went out of their way to make sure that deck would never work yet they kept making support for it until that idiotic "Angels and Demons" 3rd set. but whatever. i really dont like Wizards anymore anyway and they dont cater to my tastes as a card player anyway.
More accessibility always kills things. Imagine if attendance doubled or triples, complete Armageddon.
thats how i feel about the whole thing. its why FFG went the LCG route and makes tons of money (also helps that they have strong franchises for those LCGs too). If anything it means i might actually be able to play EDH without having to sell my soul and first born. i think thats what ticked me off most about the game. even the casual formats require you to pay upwards of $100 if you want to make something good.
Personally Id rather they have it be about Dominaria, since thats where alot of the biggest fights took place. and the villains should either Yawgmoth or The Cabal since those were pretty good villains too.
I stopped playing when Wizards decided that any decks based on a racial theme or a theme in general is bad for the game and made sure those decks were unviable at the Standard Level. Why is that important to me you ask? well i got in when Onslaught block was around and theme was still popular and i LOVED elves and Zombies and liked being able to make a deck that was all about those cards. But now you cant anymore, and the games just not fun for me anymore. Id play draft since im good at it but then id be one of those people who as soon as they win, throws all their cards in garbage and sells whatever they have left. that doesnt sound fun to me.
only cards i see worth running are Wingcrafter and Tracker. Champion seems to cute and requires us to over extend which is NEVER good for this deck and the other cards just seem too expensive for their effects. so yeah, Wingcrafter and Tracker it is.....i just dont know what to take out for them.
To be fair, RoE is widely regarded as one of the best limited formats ever. When older players praise anything that has a modern border, you know they did something right.
maybe, but why did they have to ruin the Indiana Jones set huh? couldnt they have picked the Scars block or Alara block to ruin? no, they decided to destroy Zendikar. A block that had alot of flavor and was alot of fun to play with and thats precisely my problem. and then they say "oh were really sorry we Fd up your block, we really promise not to do that again." and then along comes Innistrad. one of Wizards more successful blocks and has huge amounts of flavor and fun that would make blocks like Ravnica proud and then you know what they do? DESTROY IT! WHY?! its just a whole lot of crap that seems better served for singles and like im mad that i find NOTHING truly interesting about this set outside of a few rares. it just makes me mad is all. so much potential wasted. just like Zendikar.
Its Zendikar all over again! yknow, i get that they didnt want a repeat of RoE but im sorry WotC, its Fn RoE all over again. heres an idea for ya, you ever think that doing a non core standalone set is a good idea, do us all a favor.....DONT DO IT.
Sad to not see cards for Gisa, Geralf and Ludevic.
that pisses me off more than anything! all this neat lore for the plane and its all wasted on this Divine vs Demonic set. of all the times to bring back the shadow of RoE they had to pick now. i just feel kinda cheated to be honest because of the loss of flavor. im hoping that if they EVER do this again they will abandon the ABSOLUTELY F'ING STUPID idea that the next big set needs to abandon all of the ideas and abilities the first 2 sets have introduced. this was an exciting block that craved consistency, not what this set turned into.
wow, all this talk about Wolves being good guys now and they get 4 cards. that is so terrible. its like if your going to kill off one of the main tribes of the block so soon, why even bother making any cards for them at all in the 3rd set. sighs
i feel bad for the people who played innistrad hoping to enjoy the flavor the Werewolves brought to the game and then get slighted like that. they didnt deserve that.
You run 4 mulches and 4 artful dodges? I think there are more problems with mulch than just the fact that it doesn't flash back. It's useless late game and just bogs you down with more land. Sure there's been a few times when early in a game I wished Trackers was a Mulch instead but I'd say more often than not Trackers is a much more useful card than Mulch. But hopefully we get something even cooler in the expansion that puts the argument to rest.
we wont. this expansions theme is flicker and other RFG effects. nothing about graves here.
After reading the recent replies, I found that people don't like Mulch, why?
i like mulches!! considering we only run 20 lands anyway and it discards creatures if we dont get said lands, it basically gives us exactly what we need. does it suck that it doesnt have fashback? sure, but its still a staple for the deck imo. so is artful dodge. i have a hard time respecting dredge players who dont play 4 of these. as for changes that will come will come with the new set....we'll see.
in a skaab ruinator heavy sideboard this is a good card for dredge game 2 because it lets you feed the ruinator AND have a playable creature ready to go next turn. it basically never goes away. really nice card.
The land is pretty much worthless for our deck. Our mana base is already not stable and giving our cards flash is not that big of deal, especially at +3CMC to do it. We use all our mana and especially all of our colored mana. I was hoping for something good, but this land is definitely not what we want.
The tribal land on the other hand, has serious potential. Running Gravecrawler and Glissa with all of our other Zombies we already run lets us play black (only zombie creatures though) in the deck with almost no other commitment. Between Birds of Paradise, 4x of the new tribal cave land, and 1 swamp for Evolving Wilds to get, we would have 11 main-deck sources of black mana and very little loss of our green or blue mana. We may need to cut some of the more color-heavy cards like Dungeon Geists down to make room and improve synergy, but it might be worth it for Glissa to recur artifacts and the constant stream of free creatures provided by Gravecrawler.
It's worth testing at least.
i like the cave land, but its only good for gravecrawler and very little else. the only other zombie that would be good would be geralfs messenger and i dont see the point of a triple B in our deck at all. maybe grimgrin? nah, just gravecrawler.
so i saw our land and im just vexed by it. its an excellent land but its totally not something weve ever been known to do before (playing instants not known as GttB.), but im still intrigued by it. its definitely a 2 of i think and i would totally play that fight bear too. that cards insane for our deck. especially if we can force 1 for 1s with our weenie 2/1 cards. otherwise, death by fighting instant tree.
The worst part was that the blocks affected were my favorite planes in MTG, Zendikar and Innistrad. and while Eldrazi wasnt THAT awful, it could be said that only the level up mechanic was bad, Avacyn Restored was just plain AWFUL.
Only a few cards were any good, alot of the rest were just trash not worth the ink printed on them. There was total bias to color support (white got WAAAAY too much). only one of the mechanics turned out ok and felt balanced (spiritbond was good, Miracle was just bad and was made for luck sacks and scry.).
thinking about it now just brings up some pretty bad feelings now. it would be nice to go back to them, if only to correct those awful mistakes.
i feel bad for the people who played innistrad hoping to enjoy the flavor the Werewolves brought to the game and then get slighted like that. they didnt deserve that.