Tarmogoyf costs $50, so he has to be played in your tournament deck. Otherwise everyone will laugh at you. You will be brought to the head judge's table where they will publicly humiliate you over the PA. You will have "LOL...WTF!" stamped on your DCI card in big red letters at the door on your way out.
It looks like you don't have enough interesting interactions between cards. I just finished looking at the uncommons, and you have a card that mentions phasing which would be interesting, but there only seem to be 3 or 4 cards with phasing out of the whole set.
There is lots of tribal interaction. And the card ShapeShift and death becomes us makes sure you will get what you need.
Stripe of Color doesn't belong at uncommon, and is probably too good to print in your set at all. You don't have any artifact destruction at common in any color.
Really? I seemed to me it was worst than Whispersilk Cloak. Also Blood of the Greater Plane Heart makes it so it cannot equip, and its a common.
Really? I seemed to me it was worst than Whispersilk Cloak. Also Blood of the Greater Plane Heart makes it so it cannot equip, and its a common.
I could say the same thing about the Cloak if it were in your draft. I hadn't noticed BotGPH, but that isn't a great answer (Pongify for equipment? Red can do better). Something like Smash and/or Disenchant or Quiet Disrepair. Spread artifact hate out over a couple of colors and then it's perfectly playable.
You have zero common creatures with no drawbacks that are at or above 3/3. That will probably slow the game down, but I'm not sure. I've never drafted a FCSet before.
Printed it out and drafted it last night.
I only had enough commons for 5 people to draft. The decks where pretty crazy.
This was the line up:
The G/B Zombie deck did the worst. I think that was in part do to the fact that he never was able to draw his Zax(or was splashing too many colors). Death Becomes Us was helpful on offense with Stick of Death, but all of the effects turned out to be too symmetric to be of any use. He used ShapeShift to make all of his creatures green so that he could use Invoker of the Woods on any of them, and he had two of the Tree Top Herders. Oddly enough his only win was against the U/G deck that ended up winning.
The second worst was a Red Black deck that had alot of powerful cards but no synergy. The deck ran cards like Final Will and Lensol The Starving. The main problem I could see was that Final Will was a dead card ALL of the time. When you just spent all of your cards killing guys two for one stile, you just did not want to cast it. It ended up getting hammered by the human deck. Well one game was very close, he top decked a Storm Riders so his Succubus could not have provoke for the loss. Bad synergy all around. Honestly Final Will was a hard card to play right, so I think next time we draft if someone gets it they will have a better idea of how to use it.
Coming in third was the 5 color deck. Which relied heavily on Land of Broken dreams. As you can imagine it had no late game at all (i was groaning to my self every-time he tapped that land just seeing what was getting fates sealed) The deck was very fast with lots and lots of 2/1's for 2, and of course Hungry Fire.
The two top finishers was the B/W human deck and the G/U deck. The humans had super synrgey. Minnie might + Robot Sensei was almost always a gg. The only time it did not work was when the U/G deck Dust twistered it after it attacked (it had flying do to Pegasus Rancher). Honestly I felt it was a better deck then the U/G one, but the guy with the U/G was topdecking. He loved to wish for Counterspells or Cycling off of Paralda.
Over all people said the set was "more fun than Unhinged." (That was from someone that really liked Unhinged) Here is the top two deck lists:
Looks like I am going to have to change "RED" and "BLUE" sense they are more or less exactly the same as the cryptic cards for there color in Lorwyn. Man i wish wizards would stop ripping me off.....
I still don't think splicing onto a creature works as it says to copy the text box meaning if you sliced a shock effect the creature would gain "~ deals 2 damage to target creature or player" not "when ~ comes into play it deals 2 damage to target creature or player" or even "when ~ resolves it deals 2 damage to target creature or player" meaning the ability never triggers.
He never did respond to my last post. I feel that there are some things that you could NOT splice on to creatures, like your targeting example(which was brought up). But look at Blues card here. Could that spell be spliced into a creature? Of course. I think that the Will card is miss worded at this point, but honestly I feel that its very close to a wording that would work. Oddly enough I have drafted this set 2 at this point and NO ONE played the will card once, and the Spirit can was not in any of the packs.
BTW you can easily splice a creature into a creature, that works as outlined in this post.
I can see it working for will just fine upon rereading, the only problem is that the keyword is splice onto not into.
the spirit definitely doesn't, it's a great idea but upon resolution the slice wears off and no amount of rewording would make it work with splice. I suggest "When you play a creature spell you may pay RR and discard ~, if you do and that spell resolves, that creature gains double strike. (this effect doesn't end at end of turn)" as it's wording but if you want to play this with unset cards I suggest rewording to give flavour text too.
it's probably easier to just give it a text effect like above but I think will would work as intened if you had both a comes into play effect and an on resolution effect, that way non-creature spells would work as normal but have a useless cip effect and creatures would... ok my mistake, splice wears off upon resolution so cip never happens, man, I was sure the on resolution trigger would do the whole thing.
Condors rulings are insane! how on earth is anyone supposed to understand that?! the only time I've seen anything like that was one of WOTC's rulings and even then I understood that after 3 readings. I can see why most of what he says is right but I do't understand any of the details. Until today I've never seen anyone who can outdo my rulings. I've had half hour arguments on mws where my opponent conceded in defete when they finaly understood but that realy takes the cake!
The one part of the game that I was never been at before now nolonger even makes sence to me.
you win, your card doesn't work and there's no way it ever will but I'm not going to question you about it ever again.
wait?! spirit works too? man I've had it with your weird splice rules! nothing works the way it should!
the spirit definitely doesn't, it's a great idea but upon resolution the slice wears off and no amount of rewording would make it work with splice. I suggest "When you play a creature spell you may pay RR and discard ~, if you do and that spell resolves, that creature gains double strike. (this effect doesn't end at end of turn)" as it's wording but if you want to play this with unset cards I suggest rewording to give flavour text too.
213.5 If an effect changes any characteristics of a spell that becomes a permanent, the effect continues to apply to the permanent when the spell resolves.
If Ersatz Gnomes turns a creature spell colorless, the creature it makes will be colorless. I see no reason for it not to apply to text given to it by splice. At the very least, a little bit could be added to the CompRules to ensure that.
Condors rulings are insane! how on earth is anyone supposed to understand that?! the only time I've seen anything like that was one of WOTC's rulings and even then I understood that after 3 readings. I can see why most of what he says is right but I do't understand any of the details. Until today I've never seen anyone who can outdo my rulings. I've had half hour arguments on mws where my opponent conceded in defete when they finaly understood but that realy takes the cake!
I understood them after 3 reading as well. But he does know what he is talking about. I love talking to him about this kinda stuff, and since its based on the game we can quote the rules and you just need to look things up to see if he is right, and he is.
wait?! spirit works too? man I've had it with your weird splice rules! nothing works the way it should!
Aww common man everything "works the way it should." it might not be intuitive to everyone, including me, but the rules are the rules and thats what makes the game fair. we could not have people arguing about it or whippoorwill would have flying just because its got a picture of a bird on it.
the thing is, as far as every other rule I've ever heard of says, spirit shouldn't work.
I didn't understand him after 3, I was o put off I never read it again, I think it was suspend I understood after 3.
I simply can't bear the fact that I can't understand half of what he's saying. I'm the one who knows the rules and until now I've never been outdone. this does explain why I don't read the comp rules though...
until now I've simply said "I know how everything works so why read the rules"
the thing is, as far as every other rule I've ever heard of says, spirit shouldn't work.
The way you should think about it is. The mage casts a "creature spell" and when that spell resolves its summons a creature with the specifications of that spell. So if you modify that spell while its on the stack, you will get a different creature. Even if the modification to the spell is temporary the creature it "gets" will permanently have those abilities.
I simply can't bear the fact that I can't understand half of what he's saying.
Hehe that seems like a direct contradiction to the attitude I have out lined in my sig. The abyss is something imposable to understand, and painful to look at, and changes you as you do. BUT I know I cannot turn away. Even painful knowledge is still knowledge, and I cannot be afraid of it.
I'm the one who knows the rules and until now I've never been outdone. this does explain why I don't read the comp rules though...
until now I've simply said "I know how everything works so why read the rules"
Well I read the comp rules, all of it, and I have been reading Yawgatog's updates every time a set comes out, and yet Condor still knows more than me. But I do not think you can say you "know" something, if you have never even looked at it.
besides the creature spell summons creature thing I understand everything without having to know the rule that says so, why read the rules if I know everything I'll ever need to? (not as if this bit will matter...)
the creature spell summons creature thing works thematically but only thematically, how can a spell gaining doublestrike effect what's printed on the card?
the card enters "play" as an object on the stack, then resolves and enters play, the spell and the card, though considered different objects are realy one and the same. if the card was effectively an instant that created a token I'd be fine with that but it's not and so that shouldn't work.
it also makes no sence that the "untill ~ resolves" wares off but the "this has <ability>" doesn't.
every single rule that dictates other simmilar events in the game contradicts this, therefore either it is wrong or the rule themselves are!
the card enters "play" as an object on the stack, then resolves and enters play, the spell and the card, though considered different objects are realy one and the same. if the card was effectively an instant that created a token I'd be fine with that but it's not and so that shouldn't work.
Thats where the misunderstand comes from. Whenever a [object] changed zones it becomes an entirely new object. Like a Aven Riftwatcher that is blinked out of play does not keep it's tokens, because in each new zone its not what it was. The game counts it as if it just appeared their. Its a Card while in the hand, a Spell while on the stack and a Permanent in play. Each of those things are distinct and separate.
And, with respect, if you have never read the rules you really should not be making statements like "that does not work." Its a game based on something that very very far from reason, magic. The rules do not all have to have the "same logic" behind them. They are as written, not something you can just "peaced together" by reason.
You know, I'm kind of surprised that a set that is designed specifically for draft isn't including print runs. Think about it, if you included print runs you are more likely to develop balance in your packs rather than simply going for randomization. This is something I found to actually help out when I was testing the first phase of my set, and I think it may help you out as well as you go through testing this thing.
Also, about the complications that this set faces... something important I would say would be to go to a playgroup of people that haven't seen you developing your set from start to finish. If they can quickly grasp the mechanics, you know that you haven't overcomplicated things.
You know, I'm kind of surprised that a set that is designed specifically for draft isn't including print runs.
Ah you see I have a very good reason not to. I know knothing about print runs, only that some are weird and let me draft 10 leaden fists. If you could tell me something about them I might be able to go over them/make them. T
Also, about the complications that this set faces... something important I would say would be to go to a playgroup of people that haven't seen you developing your set from start to finish. If they can quickly grasp the mechanics, you know that you haven't overcomplicated things.
I know I am going to argue this until the day I die. I do not think "complication matters" you explain to someone once how a card should/does work and that's the end of it. Look at planeswalkers. I would not say it was easy to figure out how they work, and honestly after reading the rules text for them once or twice, I still had to guess when someone asked me if smallpox could take loyalty counters off planeswalkers. I guessed right based on how I remembered the rules where written, but still.
I think that most people know how the cards in this set SHOULD work, they are just not sure that they DO work, based on how they think the rules are written.
Ah you see I have a very good reason not to. I know knothing about print runs, only that some are weird and let me draft 10 leaden fists. If you could tell me something about them I might be able to go over them/make them.
I suggest humbly that you do some research. Here's a simple version:
Print runs are the way that Wizards make booster packs. It is most relevant for the commons, but basically it means that, given one card in a pack, there are only two possible cards that can be next to it in the pack. Through using print runs, you can introduce interesting choices or make sure that there is a balance among your colors. It virtually ensures that you will not get a pack without a card in one of the five colors for instance, basically reducing randomness.
Star City Games normally does articles on the print runs for draft strategy purposes in limited, but I use them for reconstructing practice packs. In my set, the print runs ended up being important, making sure that the packs aren't filled with the situational commons, or in my case, filled with monocolor cards.
A good place to start would be a print run that includes the cards you expect to form the basis or backbone of decks. From there, go from useful or bombier picks, or potentially cards that tend to be situationally good. This way you get a good variety of the kinds of cards, particularly commons, that appear in the packs.
EDIT: To elaborate, one of the famous examples in Time Spiral is that Strangling Soot and Errant Ephemeron are next to each other in their mutual print run. (they each appear in the print run twice, but in one of those two, they are next to each other) It means that one player gets a flying beater and another gets a powerful control card early on in a time spiral draft, and sometimes one card being missing from a pack while the other is present enables you to know what the person picked.
oh and dont listen to all the $#!% they are telling you about rules... cuz your right about most/all of it!
peace!
I love the women and im a dude, so what get over yourselfs!
There is lots of tribal interaction. And the card ShapeShift and death becomes us makes sure you will get what you need.
Really? I seemed to me it was worst than Whispersilk Cloak. Also Blood of the Greater Plane Heart makes it so it cannot equip, and its a common.
I could say the same thing about the Cloak if it were in your draft. I hadn't noticed BotGPH, but that isn't a great answer (Pongify for equipment? Red can do better). Something like Smash and/or Disenchant or Quiet Disrepair. Spread artifact hate out over a couple of colors and then it's perfectly playable.
You have zero common creatures with no drawbacks that are at or above 3/3. That will probably slow the game down, but I'm not sure. I've never drafted a FCSet before.
I only had enough commons for 5 people to draft. The decks where pretty crazy.
This was the line up:
The G/B Zombie deck did the worst. I think that was in part do to the fact that he never was able to draw his Zax(or was splashing too many colors). Death Becomes Us was helpful on offense with Stick of Death, but all of the effects turned out to be too symmetric to be of any use. He used ShapeShift to make all of his creatures green so that he could use Invoker of the Woods on any of them, and he had two of the Tree Top Herders. Oddly enough his only win was against the U/G deck that ended up winning.
The second worst was a Red Black deck that had alot of powerful cards but no synergy. The deck ran cards like Final Will and Lensol The Starving. The main problem I could see was that Final Will was a dead card ALL of the time. When you just spent all of your cards killing guys two for one stile, you just did not want to cast it. It ended up getting hammered by the human deck. Well one game was very close, he top decked a Storm Riders so his Succubus could not have provoke for the loss. Bad synergy all around. Honestly Final Will was a hard card to play right, so I think next time we draft if someone gets it they will have a better idea of how to use it.
Coming in third was the 5 color deck. Which relied heavily on Land of Broken dreams. As you can imagine it had no late game at all (i was groaning to my self every-time he tapped that land just seeing what was getting fates sealed) The deck was very fast with lots and lots of 2/1's for 2, and of course Hungry Fire.
The two top finishers was the B/W human deck and the G/U deck. The humans had super synrgey. Minnie might + Robot Sensei was almost always a gg. The only time it did not work was when the U/G deck Dust twistered it after it attacked (it had flying do to Pegasus Rancher). Honestly I felt it was a better deck then the U/G one, but the guy with the U/G was topdecking. He loved to wish for Counter spells or Cycling off of Paralda.
Over all people said the set was "more fun than Unhinged." (That was from someone that really liked Unhinged)
Here is the top two deck lists:
Black White Humans:
1X Magistrate Valero
2X Pegasus Rancher
2X Outerworldy Zombie
3X Sword of the Sworn Brotherhood
2X Minnie Might
1X Valero's Will
3X Knight of Roses
3X Serf
3X robot's Sensei
2X Fade
1X Bella Notte
2X Irrigation
4 Swamps
11 Plains
The Winner: U/G Big mana
1X Dust Twister
2X Strength of Nature
1X Master Bow Maker
1X Twister
2X Planer Growth
3X Lumbering Beast
1X Iced Jelly
1X Quicken
1X Blue
1X Living Typhoon
1X Sleepbite Sprite
2X Lesser Morphling
1X Freethought
1X Paralda, King of the Djinn
1X Weirdness Elemental
1X Thing
1X Rainbow
7X Forest
7X Island
1X Plains
1X Swamp
1X Mountain
I still don't think splicing onto a creature works as it says to copy the text box meaning if you sliced a shock effect the creature would gain "~ deals 2 damage to target creature or player" not "when ~ comes into play it deals 2 damage to target creature or player" or even "when ~ resolves it deals 2 damage to target creature or player" meaning the ability never triggers.
He never did respond to my last post. I feel that there are some things that you could NOT splice on to creatures, like your targeting example(which was brought up). But look at Blues card here. Could that spell be spliced into a creature? Of course. I think that the Will card is miss worded at this point, but honestly I feel that its very close to a wording that would work. Oddly enough I have drafted this set 2 at this point and NO ONE played the will card once, and the Spirit can was not in any of the packs.
BTW you can easily splice a creature into a creature, that works as outlined in this post.
the spirit definitely doesn't, it's a great idea but upon resolution the slice wears off and no amount of rewording would make it work with splice. I suggest "When you play a creature spell you may pay RR and discard ~, if you do and that spell resolves, that creature gains double strike. (this effect doesn't end at end of turn)" as it's wording but if you want to play this with unset cards I suggest rewording to give flavour text too.
it's probably easier to just give it a text effect like above but I think will would work as intened if you had both a comes into play effect and an on resolution effect, that way non-creature spells would work as normal but have a useless cip effect and creatures would... ok my mistake, splice wears off upon resolution so cip never happens, man, I was sure the on resolution trigger would do the whole thing.
Condors rulings are insane! how on earth is anyone supposed to understand that?! the only time I've seen anything like that was one of WOTC's rulings and even then I understood that after 3 readings. I can see why most of what he says is right but I do't understand any of the details. Until today I've never seen anyone who can outdo my rulings. I've had half hour arguments on mws where my opponent conceded in defete when they finaly understood but that realy takes the cake!
The one part of the game that I was never been at before now nolonger even makes sence to me.
you win, your card doesn't work and there's no way it ever will but I'm not going to question you about it ever again.
wait?! spirit works too? man I've had it with your weird splice rules! nothing works the way it should!
Here is the answer, in the above threads:
I understood them after 3 reading as well. But he does know what he is talking about. I love talking to him about this kinda stuff, and since its based on the game we can quote the rules and you just need to look things up to see if he is right, and he is.
Aww common man everything "works the way it should." it might not be intuitive to everyone, including me, but the rules are the rules and thats what makes the game fair. we could not have people arguing about it or whippoorwill would have flying just because its got a picture of a bird on it.
I didn't understand him after 3, I was o put off I never read it again, I think it was suspend I understood after 3.
I simply can't bear the fact that I can't understand half of what he's saying. I'm the one who knows the rules and until now I've never been outdone. this does explain why I don't read the comp rules though...
until now I've simply said "I know how everything works so why read the rules"
Hehe that seems like a direct contradiction to the attitude I have out lined in my sig. The abyss is something imposable to understand, and painful to look at, and changes you as you do. BUT I know I cannot turn away. Even painful knowledge is still knowledge, and I cannot be afraid of it. Well I read the comp rules, all of it, and I have been reading Yawgatog's updates every time a set comes out, and yet Condor still knows more than me. But I do not think you can say you "know" something, if you have never even looked at it.
the creature spell summons creature thing works thematically but only thematically, how can a spell gaining doublestrike effect what's printed on the card?
the card enters "play" as an object on the stack, then resolves and enters play, the spell and the card, though considered different objects are realy one and the same. if the card was effectively an instant that created a token I'd be fine with that but it's not and so that shouldn't work.
it also makes no sence that the "untill ~ resolves" wares off but the "this has <ability>" doesn't.
every single rule that dictates other simmilar events in the game contradicts this, therefore either it is wrong or the rule themselves are!
And, with respect, if you have never read the rules you really should not be making statements like "that does not work." Its a game based on something that very very far from reason, magic. The rules do not all have to have the "same logic" behind them. They are as written, not something you can just "peaced together" by reason.
Also, about the complications that this set faces... something important I would say would be to go to a playgroup of people that haven't seen you developing your set from start to finish. If they can quickly grasp the mechanics, you know that you haven't overcomplicated things.
Former R&D Development Team W leader
For your information, it's pronounced Argh + was.
Proud Co-Founder of
Magic Coffeehouse!
Come in, sit down, relax, get to know somebody!
I know I am going to argue this until the day I die. I do not think "complication matters" you explain to someone once how a card should/does work and that's the end of it. Look at planeswalkers. I would not say it was easy to figure out how they work, and honestly after reading the rules text for them once or twice, I still had to guess when someone asked me if smallpox could take loyalty counters off planeswalkers. I guessed right based on how I remembered the rules where written, but still.
I think that most people know how the cards in this set SHOULD work, they are just not sure that they DO work, based on how they think the rules are written.
Print runs are the way that Wizards make booster packs. It is most relevant for the commons, but basically it means that, given one card in a pack, there are only two possible cards that can be next to it in the pack. Through using print runs, you can introduce interesting choices or make sure that there is a balance among your colors. It virtually ensures that you will not get a pack without a card in one of the five colors for instance, basically reducing randomness.
Star City Games normally does articles on the print runs for draft strategy purposes in limited, but I use them for reconstructing practice packs. In my set, the print runs ended up being important, making sure that the packs aren't filled with the situational commons, or in my case, filled with monocolor cards.
A good place to start would be a print run that includes the cards you expect to form the basis or backbone of decks. From there, go from useful or bombier picks, or potentially cards that tend to be situationally good. This way you get a good variety of the kinds of cards, particularly commons, that appear in the packs.
EDIT: To elaborate, one of the famous examples in Time Spiral is that Strangling Soot and Errant Ephemeron are next to each other in their mutual print run. (they each appear in the print run twice, but in one of those two, they are next to each other) It means that one player gets a flying beater and another gets a powerful control card early on in a time spiral draft, and sometimes one card being missing from a pack while the other is present enables you to know what the person picked.
Former R&D Development Team W leader
For your information, it's pronounced Argh + was.
Proud Co-Founder of
Magic Coffeehouse!
Come in, sit down, relax, get to know somebody!