I'm starting to feel like the some of the rares are, for lack of a better word, bland and derivative. It's as if they were put there by development so standard players will have to buy boxes/singles for their decks. Case and point:
Anger of the Gods: 95% of Slagstorm. With a more generic name it could have be in M14. Good card, but no creativity.
Firedrinker Satyr: Obligatory 2 power for R guy. Jackel Pup with a marginal upside. It's not like Rakdos Cackler was tearing up Standard, and that thing could block if you really had to.
Scrylands: lands are fine but unexciting. Probably second-best mana fixing for a year. As much work as RND put into them, they came out a bit underwhelming.
I'm getting hauntings of Yugioh development philosophy wher they would "rotate" out cards and print almost identical ones so that the consumer is forced to buy them to stay competitive. I'm also not really liking this "box checking" vibe I'm getting. It's almost as if peole at RND are like "well, we need a 3 mana red sweeper. Let's take Slagstorm, rebrand it and put it in the set. Well, we also need a three mana counter spell. I know tack on scry 1 to Cancel! Oh man, Standard sure needs a burn spell. Rename searing spear, genius!" And so on and so on.
I'm not saying that these cards are bad or aren't needed, I'm saying they are feeling not different enough or flavorful enough or interesting enough.
I'm starting to feel like the some of the rares are, for lack of a better word, bland and derivative. It's as if they were put there by development so standard players will have to buy boxes/singles for their decks. Case and point:
Anger of the Gods: 95% of Slagstorm. With a more generic name it could have be in M14. Good card, but no creativity.
Firedrinker Satyr: Obligatory 2 power for R guy. Jackel Pup with a marginal upside. It's not like Rakdos Cackler was tearing up Standard, and that thing could block if you really had to.
Scrylands: lands are fine but unexciting. Probably second-best mana fixing for a year. As much work as RND put into them, they came out a bit underwhelming.
I'm getting hauntings of Yugioh development philosophy wher they would "rotate" out cards and print almost identical ones so that the consumer is forced to buy them to stay competitive. I'm also not really liking this "box checking" vibe I'm getting. It's almost as if peole at RND are like "well, we need a 3 mana red sweeper. Let's take Slagstorm, rebrand it and put it in the set. Well, we also need a three mana counter spell. I know tack on scry 1 to Cancel! Oh man, Standard sure needs a burn spell. Rename searing spear, genius!" And so on and so on.
I'm not saying that these cards are bad or aren't needed, I'm saying they are feeling not different enough or flavorful enough or interesting enough.
Don't forget Hero's Downfall at rare, give Murder the ability to hit a few more staple cards and it jumps up 2 rarities.
"I will not knock the cards until I've played with them."
He wasn't saying that they are bad, he was saying that they feel too generic and underwhelming and that they seem to be rare for no reason. You don't need to play with the cards to think that adding scry 1 to Cancel is not innovative.
how long have you played magic? I'm assuming not too long as you would notice that every couple years older card become outdated naturally and updates are brought in to shake it up.
1) Anger of the gods is not generic. a lot of planes don't have any gods. this one is full of them. the name fits theros perfectly.
2) Jackal pup is exceedingly outdated. This is just an interesting possible take on that. Look back in time and it's happened before (Norin I look at you!)
3) The Scrylands are far from the least exciting rare lands ever printed. And second best for a year?!? Were you expecting them to print something BETTER than shocklands?!? That's just you being greedy.
4) Why are you singling out 2 cards and a land cycle?? What about the gods? are they boring? The gods' weapons? How about all the other random goodies coming out?
Stop why whining and enjoy the good stuff and ignore the uninteresting stuff like EVERY OTHER SET EVER!
It feels like that they are slowly building the decks and metagame for us instead of just designing individual cards, making sure they are not overpowered and let the metagame organically sort itself out.
I saw this problem when I played Cardfight Vanguard for a short while. It got boring real quick.
IMO, I think this is what happens when they focus on the Limited format when building sets.
how long have you played magic? I'm assuming not too long as you would notice that every couple years older card become outdated naturally and updates are brought in to shake it up.
1) Anger of the gods is not generic. a lot of planes don't have any gods. this one is full of them. the name fits theros perfectly.
2) Jackal pup is exceedingly outdated. This is just an interesting possible take on that. Look back in time and it's happened before (Norin I look at you!)
3) The Scrylands are far from the least exciting rare lands ever printed. And second best for a year?!? Were you expecting them to print something BETTER than shocklands?!? That's just you being greedy.
4) Why are you singling out 2 cards and a land cycle?? What about the gods? are they boring? The gods' weapons? How about all the other random goodies coming out?
Stop why whining and enjoy the good stuff and ignore the uninteresting stuff like EVERY OTHER SET EVER!
U mad?
1. I think he was talking about the mechanic aspect, not the flavor
2. So all people should be excited about an updated Jackal Pup? I think you need to put down your nostalgia glasses.
3. They are good lands. Exciting? :rollseyes:
4. Just because it is exciting and not boring for you doesn't mean that is the case for everyone else.
Dissipate was a great variant of cancel for the last standard, because the exile effect was relevant against flashback and reanimator lists.
Scry is important to place on a number of "generic" spells as a way to make a slower format more skill intensive. It really does sound like the OP is being a little hasty in terms of knocking these spells without seeing their interactions within the meta.
"I will not knock the cards until I've played with them."
Shrug. I have to buy them before I play with them, right? But it's hard to work up enthusiasm when there are perfectly good Slagstorms, Murders, or what have you that are sitting there collecting dust. And to top it all off the Core set check lands rotate and that means more rare lands to buy. I'll do because the lands are fine, but it doesn't mean I'm thrilled.
Anger of the Gods: 95% of Slagstorm. With a more generic name it could have be in M14. Good card, but no creativity.
The fact that the card exiles the creatures is a rather large difference between the two cards... anger of the gods will be playable in modern if a deck wants a red sweeper that can actually deal with all of the value creatures like voice of resurgence or kitchen finks... slagstorm won't ever fill that role and will rarely if ever be played over pyroclasm
The fact that the card exiles the creatures is a rather large difference between the two cards... anger of the gods will be playable in modern if a deck wants a red sweeper that can actually deal with all of the value creatures like voice of resurgence or kitchen finks... slagstorm won't ever fill that role and will rarely if ever be played over pyroclasm
And this will never be played over Pyroclasm either. It will be played in addition to it. Of course, it probably isn't better than Volcanic Fallout.
1. I think he was talking about the mechanic aspect, not the flavor
2. So all people should be excited about an updated Jackal Pup? I think you need to put down your nostalgia glasses.
3. They are good lands. Exciting? :rollseyes:
4. Just because it is exciting and not boring for you doesn't mean that is the case for everyone else.
1. He specified generic NAME. read with your eyes not your mouth.
2. I'm not excited about it either. Was never really a red player, but (using your own logic in 4.) just because your not excited for it doesn't mean the people that it's meant for shouldn't be excited.
3. They are exciting. What is exciting to you? reprinting original dual lands? Original dual lands are powerful but FAR from exciting. In fact they are straight up boring if you ignore the fan girls going gaga over their price. Exciting is when a land does something it's never been able to do before and is tied into a theme that is also useful. Exciting isn't countered by "this isn't as good as my last lands. I'm gonna cry". If that is how you see things then I don't know how you get excited for anything that isn't a bomb mythic shiny foil hallelujah Jace reprint.
4. I'm not bored by it because they are new. They may be updates of old card or similar to cards that already exists, but guess what, so is almost every single card printed. This game is 20 years old. It's going to recycle old ideas naturally.
Threads like this are always started by people who don't draft very often. Rarities play a huge part in that format. Far more than they do constructed.
How is Firedrinker Satyr not flavorful or interesting enough?
He requires you to think. Unlike a development plant like Voice of Resurgence.
Also, he's hilarious (the art, lol. "HEYYYY WANNA PARTY?!")
Theros has been completely refreshing in providing cards that make you think, or work around to tap their power. No
more "Thragtusk in everything, color pie is irrelevant".
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that's not what happened at all. kamahl stabbed phage, akroma, and some old lady and they became korona. then korona got stabbed by her "prophets" and kamahl got drunk with a mutant centaur
There's just a bunch of cards with unimaginative wall of texts... bestow, monstrous and heroic are all quite clunky to read, and the 'flavor' was cute on the first few cards, and now you sort of just roll your eyes and go 'obviously...'. I don't have any particular dislikes of any of the cards, and some of them are obviously quite powerful, the whole set just feels too much like paint-by-numbers, though that's pretty much Maro's mantra.
1. I'm saying that Anger of the Gods had a Theros name, but it didn't have to. It could have been called Molten Tumolt or Scalding Blaze or Disaster Storm or a million other things and it would be near void of all flavor.
2. Just an example I had off the top of my head. Last few posters haven't been thrilled with new Jackel Pup either.
3. Nobody needs duals. I didn't say we needed old duals or fetches or whatever. But I can think of some more interesting ideas than scry 1 lands. Enemy colored CITP duals? CITP utility duals? Maybe development can't balance the other lands. Who knows? Even if the scry lands are the bees knees they just don't excite me.
4. Those were just the cards I thought of. There are a few more. What about UR fiction or fact? Okay I'll give you that but Hero's Demise? That's some innovation there for a rare!
And as for the Gods? I'm not all that thrilled. Just talked with my boyfriend (yep, imma girl) and the best thing we could say is "ehhh, they're sortof interesting."
I never said these cards weren't good (or didn't deserve to be rare heaven forbid Anger was uncommon) it just doesn't get my blood running to see such generic cards.
Am I being whiny? Maybe. I conceded that the design space of Magic is only finite, and all the "low hanging fruit" cards have been made. That doesn't meen Theros hasn't been an overall wash for me so far.
Edit: I would like to echo the above posters sentiment. Paint by Numbers.
Threads like this are always started by people who don't draft very often. Rarities play a huge part in that format. Far more than they do constructed.
You've got the wrong end of the stick there, a little. Your point is valid in that obviously we can't have insane cards filling the lower rarities because limited would quickly become a cesspool of insanity. That said, rarity (especially for staple cards like utility, removal, and mana fixing) does quite matter to constructed players. If everyone in a format HAS to play four of a card, that card goes way up in value. The rarer it was to begin with, the more insane the price gets. In limited, my price is always three packs (or a starter plus two or whatever the format is). Depending on staple rarities in a format/season my constructed costs can quickly become ridiculous, especially if I plan on switching decks or piloting multiple archetypes.
edit: re the "paint by numbers" argument above - I agree with you. A lot of the cards are pretty boring. Although I've gotta say, rolling your eyes and thinking "obviously" about what a mechanic does is actually kind of a good thing in a way. Isn't Maro just, like, obsessed with that kind of intuitive feel? That the cards naturally kind of make sense?
Although, gotta say. Makes sense and fun to play aren't always the same thing.
Cards in a set are ALWAYS going to play off past designs. I don't see why this is an issue consider how many of the cards are so different from previous ones. You can't expect all, or even most, of the cards in a set to be too unique. The game has been around too long. If you don't like standard don't play it.
It really impresses me that Wizards can continuously come up with new/meaningful abilities as frequently as they do.
Theros offers some pretty interesting cards with distinct flavor (Chained to the Rocks, Rescue from the Underworld), but fail to capture the flavor and deliver in the area of mechanics.
A monster becomes 'monstrous' only when you sink a bazillion mana in it? I feel that there should be an incremental build to make the monster a looming threat to create tension during the game. For instance, having Ember Swallower gain a monstrous counter and have it destroy a land during the upkeep, when it deals damage to the opponent or the many other different possibilities to make each monster unique, and have it affect the board e.g. 4 damage to all creatures ala Wildfire when a threshold of counters is hit, to keep things interesting. Instead, the current iteration of Monstrosity we have now just makes the monsters dumb dorks before you hit critical mana to go big.
As someone have mentioned, Bestow is wordy and clunky. It's the same ability written twice. That's awfully redundant! That restricts creativity because a physical card has its word limitation. If instead, Bestow cost works similarly to Living Weapon (put a token into play and enchant it), I feel that more design space could have been freed up. Yes, that would lose the novelty of having a Enchantment Creature card type, but it is merely a novelty which would fade away in time but leave behind a plethora of rules nightmare (see DFCs although Huntmaster of the Fells is way too OP to not play in Modern despite the hassle).
Wizards promoted Theros as a top-down design block and they gave us the awful Temple cycles. I thought nothing could be worse than DGM's cluestones but I was wrong. So, anything and everything that linked to spirituality has scry. How original is that? Temple of Abandon requires you to sacrifice or bounce a creature to fully utilize its mana? No, it has scry. Temple of Silence causes you the inability to cast spells on your turn but have access to the mana on your opponent's turn to kill whatever they churn out? No, it has scry. You call that top-down design? I reckon this would be too difficult to balance so a simple uniform effect such as, if your devotion to the 2 colors is more or equal to 3, comes into play untap, or comes into play tapped with scry 1. It would act as a reverse Scars land with the ability of the current iteration as an alternative. Anything, something other than just scry 1 would have made these lands more exciting than they are now.
As for gameplay issues, people who are arguing in favor of MaRo said that downgrading it to uncommon will lead to unbalanced Limited games. While I understand the reasons behind the decision, I ask, since the team already knew that the lands would be poorly received by constructed players, why did they not consider a design overhaul or a detailed review to discuss its long-term implications? That's the very least they could do for us consumers. Enough with the "it's for Limited! well, and uhhh, Standard, I guess?" argument, because Limited/Standard is just a portion of Magic which lasts for 1-2 years. It is a trading card game with various Eternal formats which will last till the day Magic dies. I'm not asking for Dark Confidant quality Modern staples for every single card but I'm just asking for a balanced set with something for everyone. It's obvious judging from the recent trends, design revolves around Limited (to gain FNM attendees?), and cater to Commander because it is gaining popularity, and randomly throws a bone to competitive players (Voice of Resurgence, Scavenging Ooze, Thoughtseize) to hopefully leash them but know they're not the main target audience because constructed players usually turn to the secondary market for singles which Wizards has no share in. No matter what category of consumer we fall into, all customers have to feel equally important to contribute to the health of the game.
@OP
It feels like that they are slowly building the decks and metagame for us instead of just designing individual cards, making sure they are not overpowered and let the metagame organically sort itself out.
Exactly this, it feels like they create the entire metagame because they've nailed this to a science. There's nothing really unexpected anymore.
They have a bunch of decks sitting at Tier 1.5-2 waiting for a certain card to be printed and rotate the card name basically out from set to set. The end result is every meta has a RDW, every meta has a Control deck with a sweeper, every meta has a Midrange Control. The card names change but the decks never do.
It's entirely too predictable nowadays and directly relates to them slowly reducing the options available to deckbuilders (the few people who still strive for originality). No more viable discard, no more viable LD, no more viable lock decks and extremely reduced combo potential. All because of vocal opposition to these strategies which are deemed "not fun". Newsflash you need that to keep things spicy.
Design is narrowing as they perfect it instead of widening.
You've got the wrong end of the stick there, a little. Your point is valid in that obviously we can't have insane cards filling the lower rarities because limited would quickly become a cesspool of insanity. That said, rarity (especially for staple cards like utility, removal, and mana fixing) does quite matter to constructed players. If everyone in a format HAS to play four of a card, that card goes way up in value. The rarer it was to begin with, the more insane the price gets. In limited, my price is always three packs (or a starter plus two or whatever the format is). Depending on staple rarities in a format/season my constructed costs can quickly become ridiculous, especially if I plan on switching decks or piloting multiple archetypes.
edit: re the "paint by numbers" argument above - I agree with you. A lot of the cards are pretty boring. Although I've gotta say, rolling your eyes and thinking "obviously" about what a mechanic does is actually kind of a good thing in a way. Isn't Maro just, like, obsessed with that kind of intuitive feel? That the cards naturally kind of make sense?
Although, gotta say. Makes sense and fun to play aren't always the same thing.
Price is not what WotC cares about, nor is it a factor at the higher tiers of competitive play (which are what shape other formats). A card's rarity is in no way related to how the game is actually played in constructed formats.
Back on the actual topic, there are a lot of cards that a competitive constructed format requires. If Anger of the Gods weren't printed the format only has Supreme Verdict as a decent sweeper. That's not particularly healthy.
I'll be the first to admit some things are a little shady, but you're taking a lot of these designs completely out of context. Beyond that, there are at least twice as many design knockouts as there mechanic-minded snores.
For every Fact or Fiction, Dreadbore, and Palace Guard in this set there are flawlessly designed planeswalkers, 5 exquisitely balanced and entirely unique gods, and genuine flavor coming out its ears. Not all of it is at rare. In fact, many of the coolest designs are on commons and uncommons that will only see limited play.
Rarity plays a much deeper role than to look cool. Rares that are boring/bad are a necessary part of a healthy limited and constructed environment.
EDIT:
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The fact you even know how yogioh works shows you're probably no veteran magic player, so better not act as one.
This is one of the most intolerant, judgmental things I've read on this website. If you'd like I could teach you how to play Yu-gi-oh! I'd be willing to bet I've been playing Magic almost as long as you've been alive.
Who do you think provides the secondary market with their cards? Oh right Wizards..
And constructed or not everyone who cares about his budget uses the secondary market to buy only the cards he wants.
Be glad that there are still enough people that buy packs to fuel the secondary market.
Also Theros has a bunch of interesting cards across all formats from casual to edh to modern and even legacy, you seem to expect Deathrite Shamans in every set.
Here's a little piece of information for you: This is bull. A normal sized store will order 2 cases (12 boxes) of the most recent set and crack it for the singles. This gives them approximately 4 of each card minus some of the mythics. From there a store will buy most singles from their players, occasionally cracking a few boxes when they are low on a staple. You know how players get them? From buying packs and playing limited. Limited always has and always will be WotC's greatest method of pushing product. This game is larger today than it was last year, and it was larger last year than the year before, etc.
Rarity plays a much deeper role than to look cool. Rares that are boring/bad are a necessary part of a healthy limited and constructed environment.
Actually no. It's not particularly healthy for limited format that one dude cracks open a "storm-through-the-games" rare and his side-buddy pulls a "what-is-this-Trait Doctoring". However it makes the games more variant and forces some players to entirely go on uncommons and commons and possibly attempt combo-plays to beat the "straight-out-of-the-box good singleton rares".
I have no problem with variance on packs but I'd rather want interesting rares without an actual home in the current metagame but with possibility for Johnny-players to brew on.
For instance if Trait Doctoring said the change was until your next turn's second mainphase (aka after combat), it could have become a landwalk enabler and/or possibly mana-fixing/disruption. Instead we got a rare which 97% of the community labels as pure junk and 3% is wondering if they could fit it anywhere.
On-topic: It's quite common that we get a few crap-rares but I do agree that it seems like WotC is trying to mold the metagame, instead of providing the clay and let the players do the molding.
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Anger of the Gods: 95% of Slagstorm. With a more generic name it could have be in M14. Good card, but no creativity.
Firedrinker Satyr: Obligatory 2 power for R guy. Jackel Pup with a marginal upside. It's not like Rakdos Cackler was tearing up Standard, and that thing could block if you really had to.
Scrylands: lands are fine but unexciting. Probably second-best mana fixing for a year. As much work as RND put into them, they came out a bit underwhelming.
I'm getting hauntings of Yugioh development philosophy wher they would "rotate" out cards and print almost identical ones so that the consumer is forced to buy them to stay competitive. I'm also not really liking this "box checking" vibe I'm getting. It's almost as if peole at RND are like "well, we need a 3 mana red sweeper. Let's take Slagstorm, rebrand it and put it in the set. Well, we also need a three mana counter spell. I know tack on scry 1 to Cancel! Oh man, Standard sure needs a burn spell. Rename searing spear, genius!" And so on and so on.
I'm not saying that these cards are bad or aren't needed, I'm saying they are feeling not different enough or flavorful enough or interesting enough.
"I will not knock the cards until I've played with them."
Current Abrupt Decay count: 18
My decks:
EDH
UWR Numot, the Devastator
UB Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker
BRG Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
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BBB King Macar, the Gold-Cursed
Standard
I've sworn it off. Non-rotating formats are where it's at.
Don't forget Hero's Downfall at rare, give Murder the ability to hit a few more staple cards and it jumps up 2 rarities.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
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He wasn't saying that they are bad, he was saying that they feel too generic and underwhelming and that they seem to be rare for no reason. You don't need to play with the cards to think that adding scry 1 to Cancel is not innovative.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
1) Anger of the gods is not generic. a lot of planes don't have any gods. this one is full of them. the name fits theros perfectly.
2) Jackal pup is exceedingly outdated. This is just an interesting possible take on that. Look back in time and it's happened before (Norin I look at you!)
3) The Scrylands are far from the least exciting rare lands ever printed. And second best for a year?!? Were you expecting them to print something BETTER than shocklands?!? That's just you being greedy.
4) Why are you singling out 2 cards and a land cycle?? What about the gods? are they boring? The gods' weapons? How about all the other random goodies coming out?
Stop why whining and enjoy the good stuff and ignore the uninteresting stuff like EVERY OTHER SET EVER!
I get what you mean.
It feels like that they are slowly building the decks and metagame for us instead of just designing individual cards, making sure they are not overpowered and let the metagame organically sort itself out.
I saw this problem when I played Cardfight Vanguard for a short while. It got boring real quick.
IMO, I think this is what happens when they focus on the Limited format when building sets.
U mad?
1. I think he was talking about the mechanic aspect, not the flavor
2. So all people should be excited about an updated Jackal Pup? I think you need to put down your nostalgia glasses.
3. They are good lands. Exciting? :rollseyes:
4. Just because it is exciting and not boring for you doesn't mean that is the case for everyone else.
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WBR Kaalia of the Vast WBR
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer RUG
Scry is important to place on a number of "generic" spells as a way to make a slower format more skill intensive. It really does sound like the OP is being a little hasty in terms of knocking these spells without seeing their interactions within the meta.
Shrug. I have to buy them before I play with them, right? But it's hard to work up enthusiasm when there are perfectly good Slagstorms, Murders, or what have you that are sitting there collecting dust. And to top it all off the Core set check lands rotate and that means more rare lands to buy. I'll do because the lands are fine, but it doesn't mean I'm thrilled.
The fact that the card exiles the creatures is a rather large difference between the two cards... anger of the gods will be playable in modern if a deck wants a red sweeper that can actually deal with all of the value creatures like voice of resurgence or kitchen finks... slagstorm won't ever fill that role and will rarely if ever be played over pyroclasm
And this will never be played over Pyroclasm either. It will be played in addition to it. Of course, it probably isn't better than Volcanic Fallout.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
1. He specified generic NAME. read with your eyes not your mouth.
2. I'm not excited about it either. Was never really a red player, but (using your own logic in 4.) just because your not excited for it doesn't mean the people that it's meant for shouldn't be excited.
3. They are exciting. What is exciting to you? reprinting original dual lands? Original dual lands are powerful but FAR from exciting. In fact they are straight up boring if you ignore the fan girls going gaga over their price. Exciting is when a land does something it's never been able to do before and is tied into a theme that is also useful. Exciting isn't countered by "this isn't as good as my last lands. I'm gonna cry". If that is how you see things then I don't know how you get excited for anything that isn't a bomb mythic shiny foil hallelujah Jace reprint.
4. I'm not bored by it because they are new. They may be updates of old card or similar to cards that already exists, but guess what, so is almost every single card printed. This game is 20 years old. It's going to recycle old ideas naturally.
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He requires you to think. Unlike a development plant like Voice of Resurgence.
Also, he's hilarious (the art, lol. "HEYYYY WANNA PARTY?!")
Theros has been completely refreshing in providing cards that make you think, or work around to tap their power. No
more "Thragtusk in everything, color pie is irrelevant".
1. I'm saying that Anger of the Gods had a Theros name, but it didn't have to. It could have been called Molten Tumolt or Scalding Blaze or Disaster Storm or a million other things and it would be near void of all flavor.
2. Just an example I had off the top of my head. Last few posters haven't been thrilled with new Jackel Pup either.
3. Nobody needs duals. I didn't say we needed old duals or fetches or whatever. But I can think of some more interesting ideas than scry 1 lands. Enemy colored CITP duals? CITP utility duals? Maybe development can't balance the other lands. Who knows? Even if the scry lands are the bees knees they just don't excite me.
4. Those were just the cards I thought of. There are a few more. What about UR fiction or fact? Okay I'll give you that but Hero's Demise? That's some innovation there for a rare!
And as for the Gods? I'm not all that thrilled. Just talked with my boyfriend (yep, imma girl) and the best thing we could say is "ehhh, they're sortof interesting."
I never said these cards weren't good (or didn't deserve to be rare heaven forbid Anger was uncommon) it just doesn't get my blood running to see such generic cards.
Am I being whiny? Maybe. I conceded that the design space of Magic is only finite, and all the "low hanging fruit" cards have been made. That doesn't meen Theros hasn't been an overall wash for me so far.
Edit: I would like to echo the above posters sentiment. Paint by Numbers.
You've got the wrong end of the stick there, a little. Your point is valid in that obviously we can't have insane cards filling the lower rarities because limited would quickly become a cesspool of insanity. That said, rarity (especially for staple cards like utility, removal, and mana fixing) does quite matter to constructed players. If everyone in a format HAS to play four of a card, that card goes way up in value. The rarer it was to begin with, the more insane the price gets. In limited, my price is always three packs (or a starter plus two or whatever the format is). Depending on staple rarities in a format/season my constructed costs can quickly become ridiculous, especially if I plan on switching decks or piloting multiple archetypes.
edit: re the "paint by numbers" argument above - I agree with you. A lot of the cards are pretty boring. Although I've gotta say, rolling your eyes and thinking "obviously" about what a mechanic does is actually kind of a good thing in a way. Isn't Maro just, like, obsessed with that kind of intuitive feel? That the cards naturally kind of make sense?
Although, gotta say. Makes sense and fun to play aren't always the same thing.
It really impresses me that Wizards can continuously come up with new/meaningful abilities as frequently as they do.
A monster becomes 'monstrous' only when you sink a bazillion mana in it? I feel that there should be an incremental build to make the monster a looming threat to create tension during the game. For instance, having Ember Swallower gain a monstrous counter and have it destroy a land during the upkeep, when it deals damage to the opponent or the many other different possibilities to make each monster unique, and have it affect the board e.g. 4 damage to all creatures ala Wildfire when a threshold of counters is hit, to keep things interesting. Instead, the current iteration of Monstrosity we have now just makes the monsters dumb dorks before you hit critical mana to go big.
As someone have mentioned, Bestow is wordy and clunky. It's the same ability written twice. That's awfully redundant! That restricts creativity because a physical card has its word limitation. If instead, Bestow cost works similarly to Living Weapon (put a token into play and enchant it), I feel that more design space could have been freed up. Yes, that would lose the novelty of having a Enchantment Creature card type, but it is merely a novelty which would fade away in time but leave behind a plethora of rules nightmare (see DFCs although Huntmaster of the Fells is way too OP to not play in Modern despite the hassle).
Wizards promoted Theros as a top-down design block and they gave us the awful Temple cycles. I thought nothing could be worse than DGM's cluestones but I was wrong. So, anything and everything that linked to spirituality has scry. How original is that? Temple of Abandon requires you to sacrifice or bounce a creature to fully utilize its mana? No, it has scry. Temple of Silence causes you the inability to cast spells on your turn but have access to the mana on your opponent's turn to kill whatever they churn out? No, it has scry. You call that top-down design? I reckon this would be too difficult to balance so a simple uniform effect such as, if your devotion to the 2 colors is more or equal to 3, comes into play untap, or comes into play tapped with scry 1. It would act as a reverse Scars land with the ability of the current iteration as an alternative. Anything, something other than just scry 1 would have made these lands more exciting than they are now.
As for gameplay issues, people who are arguing in favor of MaRo said that downgrading it to uncommon will lead to unbalanced Limited games. While I understand the reasons behind the decision, I ask, since the team already knew that the lands would be poorly received by constructed players, why did they not consider a design overhaul or a detailed review to discuss its long-term implications? That's the very least they could do for us consumers. Enough with the "it's for Limited! well, and uhhh, Standard, I guess?" argument, because Limited/Standard is just a portion of Magic which lasts for 1-2 years. It is a trading card game with various Eternal formats which will last till the day Magic dies. I'm not asking for Dark Confidant quality Modern staples for every single card but I'm just asking for a balanced set with something for everyone. It's obvious judging from the recent trends, design revolves around Limited (to gain FNM attendees?), and cater to Commander because it is gaining popularity, and randomly throws a bone to competitive players (Voice of Resurgence, Scavenging Ooze, Thoughtseize) to hopefully leash them but know they're not the main target audience because constructed players usually turn to the secondary market for singles which Wizards has no share in. No matter what category of consumer we fall into, all customers have to feel equally important to contribute to the health of the game.
Just my 2 cents.
Exactly this, it feels like they create the entire metagame because they've nailed this to a science. There's nothing really unexpected anymore.
They have a bunch of decks sitting at Tier 1.5-2 waiting for a certain card to be printed and rotate the card name basically out from set to set. The end result is every meta has a RDW, every meta has a Control deck with a sweeper, every meta has a Midrange Control. The card names change but the decks never do.
It's entirely too predictable nowadays and directly relates to them slowly reducing the options available to deckbuilders (the few people who still strive for originality). No more viable discard, no more viable LD, no more viable lock decks and extremely reduced combo potential. All because of vocal opposition to these strategies which are deemed "not fun". Newsflash you need that to keep things spicy.
Design is narrowing as they perfect it instead of widening.
A lot of very strong very playable cards that will be excellent to engage with once the previous block rotates out.
Price is not what WotC cares about, nor is it a factor at the higher tiers of competitive play (which are what shape other formats). A card's rarity is in no way related to how the game is actually played in constructed formats.
Back on the actual topic, there are a lot of cards that a competitive constructed format requires. If Anger of the Gods weren't printed the format only has Supreme Verdict as a decent sweeper. That's not particularly healthy.
I'll be the first to admit some things are a little shady, but you're taking a lot of these designs completely out of context. Beyond that, there are at least twice as many design knockouts as there mechanic-minded snores.
For every Fact or Fiction, Dreadbore, and Palace Guard in this set there are flawlessly designed planeswalkers, 5 exquisitely balanced and entirely unique gods, and genuine flavor coming out its ears. Not all of it is at rare. In fact, many of the coolest designs are on commons and uncommons that will only see limited play.
Rarity plays a much deeper role than to look cool. Rares that are boring/bad are a necessary part of a healthy limited and constructed environment.
EDIT:
This is one of the most intolerant, judgmental things I've read on this website. If you'd like I could teach you how to play Yu-gi-oh! I'd be willing to bet I've been playing Magic almost as long as you've been alive.
My Blog About It
Here's a little piece of information for you: This is bull. A normal sized store will order 2 cases (12 boxes) of the most recent set and crack it for the singles. This gives them approximately 4 of each card minus some of the mythics. From there a store will buy most singles from their players, occasionally cracking a few boxes when they are low on a staple. You know how players get them? From buying packs and playing limited. Limited always has and always will be WotC's greatest method of pushing product. This game is larger today than it was last year, and it was larger last year than the year before, etc.
My Blog About It
I have no problem with variance on packs but I'd rather want interesting rares without an actual home in the current metagame but with possibility for Johnny-players to brew on.
For instance if Trait Doctoring said the change was until your next turn's second mainphase (aka after combat), it could have become a landwalk enabler and/or possibly mana-fixing/disruption. Instead we got a rare which 97% of the community labels as pure junk and 3% is wondering if they could fit it anywhere.
On-topic: It's quite common that we get a few crap-rares but I do agree that it seems like WotC is trying to mold the metagame, instead of providing the clay and let the players do the molding.