Affinity was fine pre-ravager. I mean, affinity had the tools... better tools, in the form of Atog. Add Skullclamp + Ravager and you have combo. Add Cranial Plating and you have super-agro.
And for hte last time: Affinity isn't broken, people are just sick of losing to the best deck in T2. Maybe enforcer shoulda cost 8, and surely Cranial Plating shouldn't have seen play... but affinity was a solid aggro-combo deck. With just a couple of broken non-affinity pieces... disciple and plating... and skullclamp.
... How are you not banned yet?
Anyways, I really doubt that Wizards would purposely throw out cards with full intent of banning them. Or at least in Skullclamps case.
There are times that I believe they should throw out a card and then immediately ban in it the Standard environment, because sometimes a good card for the other environments might be overly broken for Standard, but very level in other environments (Raffinity in Extended)
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New Rules come out for 1999 6th Edition... "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO PORTAL! THE GAME IS RUINED! EVERYONE PETITION AND GET THEM TO CHANGE IT BACK!"
New Rules come out for 2010 Edition... "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO YU-GI-OH! THE GAME IS RUINED! EVERYONE PETITION AND GET THEM TO CHANGE IT BACK!"
New Rules come out for *Reserved for something in 2020* "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO *currently "simple" game by the more "skilled" players*! THE GAME IS..." etc.
There's no way Chutzpah (if the mechanic is real) can have the mana requirement be the same color as the card itself. If the idea is that you can play the card free but risk taking mana burn, then who the hell would float 6 blue mana to play a 4-mana blue spell unless there was somewhere to spend the mana? There's absolutely no drawback involved since you either get a free spell or you pay the hard cost and take no mana burn.
Well, I actually think the alternate casting cost being speculated has a lot of advantages.
Using the most current example, take Kentaro the Smiling Cat. I think everyone who wants to construct a multi-colored samurai deck, ought to have at least one of these guys in there.
I think that's what they're going for with this Glissa-like ability -- splashability. Remeber, we don't know what it's going to be exactly.
The whole idea of this block, apparantly, is to promote multicolored play. This will do just that. It becomes a whole lot easier to splash a third, or even a fourth, color when you don't really have to worry about balancing out the land count.
The more I think about this too, the more I get the feeling that this will be predominantly on the gold cards (needing at least one of the colors of mana), allowing you to throw them in the deck without the huge worry of not having the specific lands just yet. This also keeps the whole "free" thing from getting out of hand.
Something like:
Gold Creature
GR3 (5cc)
Ability: You may pay 6G or 6R instead of the casting cost
If you payed Ability rather than than the casting cost, some detriment.
or
Gold Creature
GR3 (5cc)
Ability: You may play this creature if you have at least 6G or 6R in your mana pool
If you payed Ability rather than the casting cost, some detriment.
EDIT: heh, maybe those rediculously useless mana-snakes in Betrayers were conceived for a reason.....
if this were true, don't you think they would've made Skullclamp rare too?
:biggrin3:
Actually, making it rare wouldn't have spurred pack sales as much. Who wants to go hunting for Skullclamps if you have to buy 2 boxes to get one? I bought MORE Darksteel because Skullclamp was an uncommon. Some boxes had 16 of them in there... and I was selling them for $5 each!
And they could have thrown one into each of the precons for Darksteel - spur Precon sales like mad!
There's no way Chutzpah (if the mechanic is real) can have the mana requirement be the same color as the card itself. If the idea is that you can play the card free but risk taking mana burn, then who the hell would float 6 blue mana to play a 4-mana blue spell unless there was somewhere to spend the mana? There's absolutely no drawback involved since you either get a free spell or you pay the hard cost and take no mana burn.
The point is not to take mana burn, if it were, the mechanic wouldn't be nearly as elegant. If it's real, it's supposed to work like glissa - you have to spend mana to play a card, then takes advantage of that to play the chutzpah spell/Glissa's ability. It's a mechanic chock full of tension; you have to evaluate which cards to put into your deck to get the most out of it. I believe this to be way better designed than if it was simply "this spell costs 4, but you can pay 2 mana and 2life to play it instead".
Omega Gir: I find it slightly amusing that you describe priest of gix as 'fair' - you do know it had to be errat'd because it was broken, right?
And the urza free spells would not have been fine if they said basic lands. Academy was NOT the only problem with those things! Treachery, timespiral et al were borken. Did you never hear of high tide?
Out of the High Tide decks Palinchron was the main cog in the engine that helped fuel the deck. Cloud of Faeries sees more play than any of the free spells combined. How many decks these days use Time Spiral? Snap sees more play than it does.
'buster
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'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset. Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
Do I understand you correctly, that you think MaRo was lying to us, when he appologized for not recognizing skullclamp early enough in developement? I actually believed, when R&D said, that they missed the card and only recognized it in FFL, when it was too late to change it.
MaRo is a frontman, a public figure, a face at the front of an organization. Of course he'll tell us what we're meant to hear - and that's not always the truth. As friendly as his articles appear, they do contain some propaganda.
But let's not get into conspiracy theory here! :yikes:
As for your second point: I wasn't aware that the FFL tests cards that are already finalized. I thought that the card pool included cards that are still tweakable? Shows how much I know. Is there a good article where they show us the complete design process from start to finish?
They're doing it on purpose in most cases. Skullclamp was no mistake
Actually in an article a while back they explained how it happened, at the last minute they dropped the equip cost to make it 'better' so they didn't really test it at all to know how powerful it would be.
LOL another rumor thread turned conspiracy theory. I am not sure I believe there stories about teh clamp though myself...That card is so broken in half my little brother that has only played once new how good it is.
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"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."
- H.P. Lovecraft
Actually in an article a while back they explained how it happened, at the last minute they dropped the equip cost to make it 'better' so they didn't really test it at all to know how powerful it would be.
Actually, they dropped the cost and changed the P/T "boost" at at the same time. And nobody "noticed". And they won't admit whose brilliant idea it was. Maybe they will explain Jitte the same way. Definitely a fishy story.
Fishy story, aye.. But I actually overlooked skullclamp myself when Darksteel came out. Got distracted by Ravager, Colossus and the other Incredibles.. i mean indestructibles. Only when someone pointed it out to me I said "good grief."
I'm inclined to believe the mechanics, neither is to high powered any both fit with the little information we've got so far. The first one definitely has the most potential allowing free spells but only when you've got enough mana(a bit like the urzas saga mechanics).
I wonder why Snap and Cloud of Faeries are used more than Time Spiral in Extended? Oh, wait, Time Spiral is banned.
Who the hell gives a rats ass about only Extended? Sure, if it wasn't banned in Extended then it'd probably see play but nevertheless, that wasn't the onyl format I was talking about. Even in T1 Time Spiral rarely sees play at all, despite its ability and restriction.
'buster
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'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset. Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
Who the hell gives a rats ass about only Extended? Sure, if it wasn't banned in Extended then it'd probably see play but nevertheless, that wasn't the onyl format I was talking about. Even in T1 Time Spiral rarely sees play at all, despite its ability and restriction.
'buster
Yeah, but that might have more to do with Time Twister being legal in the format :tongue2:
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
I don't think that was Future Future League. FFL, if I remember, involves playing with cards with stickers on them. I think that was just internal playtesting post publishing the final set.
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Well, I'm thinking that something with an alternate casting cost of one solid color automatically overpowers it. I mean, a 3/3 for 3WW with an alt. cost of UUU is just too powerful, because everyone blue deck would run four. Maybe if they had it to where you had to control a plains before you could play the alt. cost, then I could see it seeing ink. Until then, no way.
I agree wit Axle. I was just about to post that idea myself. I do believe however that this thread has turned into speculation for the most part. The rumor at the core of this hasnt been confirmed by anyone except the initial poster, who has done very little to support this rumor.
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"But then are we most in order when we are most out of order."-Jack Cade
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."
- H.P. Lovecraft
First of all, this is quite early to be hearing such detailed info about the next set, when we arent even sure what the keywords will be for SoK, and second of all, these abilities seem a little on the powerful side. The first one allows green to go flat retarded, what with its mana accel, it would be able to play one card for free, and then 2 or 3 more with the mana it had stowed up. The second ability seems too obscene as well, as any card I could think of for it would be broken. Giving all fliers bonuses? Broken. Giving all tramplers bonuses? Broken. Imagine someone playing a flier deck, and all their fliers getting +2/+2 or something like that. Or a trample deck where everything gets buffed. I am very skeptical of this, especially seeing that we don't even have this kinda info on SoK yet. 1/10 for believability.
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... How are you not banned yet?
Anyways, I really doubt that Wizards would purposely throw out cards with full intent of banning them. Or at least in Skullclamps case.
There are times that I believe they should throw out a card and then immediately ban in it the Standard environment, because sometimes a good card for the other environments might be overly broken for Standard, but very level in other environments (Raffinity in Extended)
Using the most current example, take Kentaro the Smiling Cat. I think everyone who wants to construct a multi-colored samurai deck, ought to have at least one of these guys in there.
I think that's what they're going for with this Glissa-like ability -- splashability. Remeber, we don't know what it's going to be exactly.
The whole idea of this block, apparantly, is to promote multicolored play. This will do just that. It becomes a whole lot easier to splash a third, or even a fourth, color when you don't really have to worry about balancing out the land count.
The more I think about this too, the more I get the feeling that this will be predominantly on the gold cards (needing at least one of the colors of mana), allowing you to throw them in the deck without the huge worry of not having the specific lands just yet. This also keeps the whole "free" thing from getting out of hand.
Something like:
Gold Creature
GR3 (5cc)
Ability: You may pay 6G or 6R instead of the casting cost
If you payed Ability rather than than the casting cost, some detriment.
or
Gold Creature
GR3 (5cc)
Ability: You may play this creature if you have at least 6G or 6R in your mana pool
If you payed Ability rather than the casting cost, some detriment.
EDIT: heh, maybe those rediculously useless mana-snakes in Betrayers were conceived for a reason.....
peace
Actually, making it rare wouldn't have spurred pack sales as much. Who wants to go hunting for Skullclamps if you have to buy 2 boxes to get one? I bought MORE Darksteel because Skullclamp was an uncommon. Some boxes had 16 of them in there... and I was selling them for $5 each!
And they could have thrown one into each of the precons for Darksteel - spur Precon sales like mad!
.
The point is not to take mana burn, if it were, the mechanic wouldn't be nearly as elegant. If it's real, it's supposed to work like glissa - you have to spend mana to play a card, then takes advantage of that to play the chutzpah spell/Glissa's ability. It's a mechanic chock full of tension; you have to evaluate which cards to put into your deck to get the most out of it. I believe this to be way better designed than if it was simply "this spell costs 4, but you can pay 2 mana and 2life to play it instead".
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And the urza free spells would not have been fine if they said basic lands. Academy was NOT the only problem with those things! Treachery, timespiral et al were borken. Did you never hear of high tide?
'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
MaRo is a frontman, a public figure, a face at the front of an organization. Of course he'll tell us what we're meant to hear - and that's not always the truth. As friendly as his articles appear, they do contain some propaganda.
But let's not get into conspiracy theory here! :yikes:
As for your second point: I wasn't aware that the FFL tests cards that are already finalized. I thought that the card pool included cards that are still tweakable? Shows how much I know. Is there a good article where they show us the complete design process from start to finish?
.
Actually in an article a while back they explained how it happened, at the last minute they dropped the equip cost to make it 'better' so they didn't really test it at all to know how powerful it would be.
Believe that if you want.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."
- H.P. Lovecraft
I mean, nuisance engine? And hot on its heels came myr servitor.. and I'm just thinking casually here..
Back to topic: Yes this can also work as an ACC that's actually more expensive for once. Something like
CC: 2RB
Chutzpah 5 (If you control a swamp or mountain, you may play this for instead)
Could be cool. Or broken. We'll see.
I wonder why Snap and Cloud of Faeries are used more than Time Spiral in Extended? Oh, wait, Time Spiral is banned.
Machius proudly supports R_E's right to Rumour!
So little you know about the game. Madness didn't break Bazaar. There's very few T1 madness decks...
Off-topic, and flame. Warning.
Who the hell gives a rats ass about only Extended? Sure, if it wasn't banned in Extended then it'd probably see play but nevertheless, that wasn't the onyl format I was talking about. Even in T1 Time Spiral rarely sees play at all, despite its ability and restriction.
'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
Yeah, but that might have more to do with Time Twister being legal in the format :tongue2:
---
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Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
Which color are you?
Non-Judge - Comprehensive Rules Delver
|| Autocard || My Latest Project ||
Random quote of the last time I updated my sig:
"...FOMG THE SCROLL LOCK KEY DOES SOMETHING "
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."
- H.P. Lovecraft