I'm sure this has been asnwered plenty of places elsewhere, but do you have to draft your wastes, will limited tourneys have a land station with Wastes just like every other basic land?
Bushwacker is an excellent card, have plenty of 1 drop creatures and burn spells, seems insane with tokens.
Contortion is going to be the premiere removal spell, can literally be put into any deck and the pump can be relevaant, it's just a very good card though the colorless is way too pushed.
The red/blue legend I want to be good but red/blue are not good control colors, and it's hard to chain spells together in those colors combining reactive and proactive spells. I think her and the rest of the cards are unplayable trash. Everything costs 2 mana too many to see play.
Think we're forgetting that Illusory Angel saw no play whatsoever.
Too soon to tell but I don't think its a stretch to say we're looking at another crap set that contributes very little to the game. Based on this I would say no new decks will arise and the decks we have currently will see barely any change, I mean these are really bad cards, look how many hoops the dragon has to leap through to be a 5 mana bad siege rhino, at least give it haste, this is going to be theros/ravnica all over again where the same decks dominate the entire season.
I keep waiting for the artifacts that have colorless-only mana costs, seems like a simple way to make artifacts that can't be thrown into any color deck.
Walker of the Wastes looks like fun, though that wording seems odd. Why not just say "Wastes you control" ?
Because Wastes don't have a basic land type, so it must be referenced by name
I still don't get why they didn't give Wastes a basic land type. Was there anty reason to not give it a type other than weirdness?
Power level concerns? It would have given things with domain a potential powerup, while nerfing things like coalition victory. It would likely have been pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but it would be another thing for them to balance against in the future, especially if they don't want to put wastes in every set.
The merfolk legendary needed some sort of evasion. Just seems like a worse Ephara to me. Also they made a worse bushwhacker...? I wouldn't want to top deck this with nothing in my hand. I guess the "ally" sub type had to make the card worse.
Well, unless you only have 2 mana, Reckless Bushwhacker is better than Goblin Bushwhacker when your hand is empty. You likely don't have anything to do with the extra mana, and he has an extra point of power on subsequent turns. This card is pretty solid.
This is wrong, I didn't RTFC.
Jori En, Ruin Diveris now my new favorite merfolk (supplanting Sygg, River Cutthroat who while a good deal of fun was not a good deal of um, good...). Don't evaluate her as a 3 drop though, I see her as a 4/5 drop in a deck with a lot of cheap interaction. Tossing her down with 2 open, a probe, a bolt/thought scour and a dispel in hand seems like my kind of party.
Spatial Contortion intrigues me. I've cast a lot of nameless inversions in my day, I wonder how easy the colorless will be to come by in standard.
Deepfathom Stalker feels over developed. Very compelling design but horribly over costed at every point to keep it from seeing play. Maybe if it had built in invasion at least? : / Seems ok in commander though, I might try it out in Thada Adel.
Dread Defiler is one to get me thinking- there are a lot of juicy targets in standard right now for its ability, but I am not sure how best to build towards making it viable. Ramp? kinda light on creatures. Self Mill? might be light on mana. [card]See the Unwritten[card]? hmmm....
I'm sure this has been asnwered plenty of places elsewhere, but do you have to draft your wastes, will limited tourneys have a land station with Wastes just like every other basic land?
You have to draft the Wastes. And can only play the ones you have drafted.
As they show up in two slots at common, that means there will be twice as many chances to get them in the draft. But still when to take them will be a strategic choice.
Spatial Contortion is frustrating because it is cool but basically hands red and black's thing to everyone. Green now gets an instant speed Lightning Strike! One argument is that <> is hard to play in the three+ color mana bases available in modern, but at one or two colors its incredibly easy to splash these if they're worth it, and this definitely is. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth, since none of the waste mana effects seem all that different or unique below mythic.
I've had the impression that BFZ was designed to promote two color deck strategies in eternal constructed formats. The Battle lands do this since they can be better than shock lands in two color decks as two color decks won't be hampered with needing to get out two basics as much as 3+ color decks will be. Then the addition of playable spells that require colorless mana encourage players to use pain lands and filter lands as fixers so they also can have access to colorless mana for stuff like Spacial Contortion (which now beats Complete Disreguard as one of the cheapest ways to deal with Etched Champion).
Spatial Contortion is frustrating because it is cool but basically hands red and black's thing to everyone. Green now gets an instant speed Lightning Strike! One argument is that <> is hard to play in the three+ color mana bases available in modern, but at one or two colors its incredibly easy to splash these if they're worth it, and this definitely is. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth, since none of the waste mana effects seem all that different or unique below mythic.
It's going to take a while for people to wrap their heads around the practical difference between spells that have completely generic costs and spells that require colorless mana to cast. The difference between a spell that costs 1C and one that costs 2 is that any colored source can be used to cast the second, but no colored source can pay for the C in the first unless that land specifically adds C as well. Colorless cards are no more splashable than colored cards; both need you to be playing specific kinds of mana sources in order to work.
Colorless spells have the advantage that the colorless-only lands are much more powerful than a colored basic (although they do have the downside of being nonbasic), but lands that produce both colorless and colored mana are typically much worse than two-color duals. The best manabases, even for mono-color decks, typically play no more than 4 colorless sources, which is 6-10 too few to consistently play a 1C spell. To be able to cast your colorless spell, you have to play an otherwise suboptimal manabase and the fixing available to you (painlands, filterlands) is worse than the fixing you get if you wanted to splash an actual color (fetches, shocks, battlelands).
The only popular decks in Modern that can play these cards comfortably are Tron decks, which play 12+ colorless lands already. Notably, tron decks play very few colored cards, none of which require two mana of a single color to cast, and they typically play 4-8 artifacts to help fix colored mana for them. You'll have to make similar sacrifices to play colorless spells like this one, since there's only so many painlands and filters you can realistically get away with.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"I am so stupid that I cannot understand philosophy; the antithesis of this is that philosophy is so clever that it cannot comprehend my stupidity. These antitheses are mediated in a higher unity; in our common stupidity."
~ Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
Surge cards seem cool, if you can actually play them with Surge, but the horrible part of the design is, you get a more expensive AND much less usefull card if you pay full-price, and nobody likes expensive cards that do nothing ...
I just dont like the designs in this set, seem lazy, ugly artwork, WotC has to do much better than this, much much better ...
Well, unless you only have 2 mana, Reckless Bushwhacker is better than Goblin Bushwhacker when your hand is empty. You likely don't have anything to do with the extra mana, and he has an extra point of power on subsequent turns. This card is pretty solid.
Actually, not quite; re-read Reckless Bushwhacker. You need to pay its surge cost to get the effect, otherwise it is just a 2/1 haste for 3. If you want the pump for the team, you need to cast another spell before him to get the effect at all, making him pretty dead if your hand is empty and you draw it.
I keep waiting for the artifacts that have colorless-only mana costs, seems like a simple way to make artifacts that can't be thrown into any color deck.
Walker of the Wastes looks like fun, though that wording seems odd. Why not just say "Wastes you control" ?
Because Wastes don't have a basic land type, so it must be referenced by name
I still don't get why they didn't give Wastes a basic land type. Was there anty reason to not give it a type other than weirdness?
Yes. If they made a new basic type because of this, it would change older cards that modify land types (making them stronger if they can change opponent's lands) and it would make cards with Domain stronger.
There was probably an option to give Wastes a land type that would not be basic (like Gate), but they probably figured that everyone would think it is a basic land type and play it wrong.
Making Domain stronger has been something they've wanted to do for years. They've been so close to making a sixth basic land (with type) for years and something keeps holding them back. They always say something about cards like Coalition Victory being affected, well, so what? Old cards get affected by new cards all the time. They should have just bit the bullet and gone all the way with Wastes so that it was a basic land with a basic land type that tapped for colorless.
While I'm glad to see this half-step in the right direction, that's what it is: a half-step.
Well, unless you only have 2 mana, Reckless Bushwhacker is better than Goblin Bushwhacker when your hand is empty. You likely don't have anything to do with the extra mana, and he has an extra point of power on subsequent turns. This card is pretty solid.
Actually, not quite; re-read Reckless Bushwhacker. You need to pay its surge cost to get the effect, otherwise it is just a 2/1 haste for 3. If you want the pump for the team, you need to cast another spell before him to get the effect at all, making him pretty dead if your hand is empty and you draw it.
Mea Culpa. I didn't RTFC properly : / That is worse by a rather large margin. I don't think that makes him unplayable by any means (if a modern port of kuldotha red exists I wouldn't be surprised if they tested this guy out e.g.), but I'm not exactly fired up about him.
I keep waiting for the artifacts that have colorless-only mana costs, seems like a simple way to make artifacts that can't be thrown into any color deck.
Walker of the Wastes looks like fun, though that wording seems odd. Why not just say "Wastes you control" ?
Because Wastes don't have a basic land type, so it must be referenced by name
I still don't get why they didn't give Wastes a basic land type. Was there anty reason to not give it a type other than weirdness?
Yes. If they made a new basic type because of this, it would change older cards that modify land types (making them stronger if they can change opponent's lands) and it would make cards with Domain stronger.
There was probably an option to give Wastes a land type that would not be basic (like Gate), but they probably figured that everyone would think it is a basic land type and play it wrong.
Making Domain stronger has been something they've wanted to do for years. They've been so close to making a sixth basic land (with type) for years and something keeps holding them back. They always say something about cards like Coalition Victory being affected, well, so what? Old cards get affected by new cards all the time. They should have just bit the bullet and gone all the way with Wastes so that it was a basic land with a basic land type that tapped for colorless.
While I'm glad to see this half-step in the right direction, that's what it is: a half-step.
Affecting old cards by new cards -- yes. Completely breaking old cards if you're not using the new ones -- no.
The problem with Coalition Victory is that if they made new basic land type, all existing decks that use the card (as few as might be) would stop working.
On the 'failed mechanics' I do not believe they are as bad as many of you say.
Cohort is a mechanic that shines is casual constructed. It creates interesting tension between attacking with your creatures and using them for their spell effects as well as choosing who to tap. It does not feel quite like the other ally mechanics but very much makes use of 'team' flavor. By filling a different role than rally and the ETB effects of original Zendikar, it gives your allies something to do when on the battlefield or in the face of things like Torpor Orb. This helps to carve out a more defensive, controlling build for the tribe. This will not likely make a dent in tournament anything, but it gives casual playability to what would otherwise be purely chaff. I vastly prefer things like Munda's Vanguard to deliberate crud like prism array.
Support carves out no new design space is is not really a keyword in the sense of earlier keywords. It is simply a coat of marketing paint over a fairly basic game action. In that its detractors are correct. However, I fail to see how this is harmful to the game or gameplay in any way. They would not put something new or novel in its place, as there is precious little new or novel keyword space left. We are already getting more mechanics than are expected of a small set, be content with the others and recognize that this is not a true mechanic, but a generic game action that would be there anyway. If it hurts you to think that generic game actions now get keywords, ignore the keyword and play the card as you otherwise would.
Affecting old cards by new cards -- yes. Completely breaking old cards if you're not using the new ones -- no.
The problem with Coalition Victory is that if they made new basic land type, all existing decks that use the card (as few as might be) would stop working.
I've had the impression that BFZ was designed to promote two color deck strategies in eternal constructed formats. The Battle lands do this since they can be better than shock lands in two color decks as two color decks won't be hampered with needing to get out two basics as much as 3+ color decks will be. Then the addition of playable spells that require colorless mana encourage players to use pain lands and filter lands as fixers so they also can have access to colorless mana for stuff like Spacial Contortion (which now beats Complete Disreguard as one of the cheapest ways to deal with Etched Champion).
This is how I feel too. It makes sense, but it seems a little bit like a nuclear arms race to me. I guess it's too late to undo the easiness of multicolor.
It's going to take a while for people to wrap their heads around the practical difference between spells that have completely generic costs and spells that require colorless mana to cast. The difference between a spell that costs 1C and one that costs 2 is that any colored source can be used to cast the second, but no colored source can pay for the C in the first unless that land specifically adds C as well. Colorless cards are no more splashable than colored cards; both need you to be playing specific kinds of mana sources in order to work.
Colorless spells have the advantage that the colorless-only lands are much more powerful than a colored basic (although they do have the downside of being nonbasic), but lands that produce both colorless and colored mana are typically much worse than two-color duals. The best manabases, even for mono-color decks, typically play no more than 4 colorless sources, which is 6-10 too few to consistently play a 1C spell. To be able to cast your colorless spell, you have to play an otherwise suboptimal manabase and the fixing available to you (painlands, filterlands) is worse than the fixing you get if you wanted to splash an actual color (fetches, shocks, battlelands).
The only popular decks in Modern that can play these cards comfortably are Tron decks, which play 12+ colorless lands already. Notably, tron decks play very few colored cards, none of which require two mana of a single color to cast, and they typically play 4-8 artifacts to help fix colored mana for them. You'll have to make similar sacrifices to play colorless spells like this one, since there's only so many painlands and filters you can realistically get away with.
I get how colorless mana works, but I don't buy that they're not more splashable. Yes, fetches, shocks, battlelands are better than painlands and filterlands (not always; certain decks in the past liked Filterlands because they could go from A to BB on turn two when A is an AC land...) but they only provide 2 colors, not 3. If you're looking at C as a color, Mystic Gate and Adarkar Wastes are miles better than Arcane Sanctum. And Tron is far from the only deck that can easily get colorless.
In modern:
-Jund loves filters for hitting double black from an off-color dual.
-Twin can run Desolate Lighthouse, Ghost Quarter, Tectonic Edge on top of pains/filters.
-Burn does want double red, but if it finds a C card worth including, it has the least trouble doing so.
-Amulet Bloom has zero problem getting colorless sources.
-Affinity... lol
-Any tribal deck has Cavern of Souls.
No, no one currently runs enough colorless sources to cast these spells... because they haven't had a reason to. The question will be if it's worth building for or not, but it's CERTAINLY far easier than adding another color. From the looks of the spoilers so far, I would guess that they're keep the majority of C above 4 CMC for this reason. At cheaper costs, even basic effects like Spatial Contortion will certainly see play somewhere, if only for the reason Gut Shot and Hornet Sting have.
Cohort is an ability word. It has no rules meaning. It's just a word intended to group a set of abilities that have a unifying similarity together and give flavor. I'm the case of Cohort the unifying factor is more than likely " - tap an ally you control" the effect of this one card produces counters. A blue one could be "tap target creature, it doesn't untap during its controllers next upkeep." Etc etc.
Either way, hooray for more dumb, pointless "new" mechanics, abilities, whatever you want to call them. Getting old fast. I wish they would just stick to reusing good mechanics instead of coming up with the 90th +1/+1 counter variation every set. I'd rather them continue to support all mechanics throughout the block.
Contortion is going to be the premiere removal spell, can literally be put into any deck and the pump can be relevaant, it's just a very good card though the colorless is way too pushed.
The red/blue legend I want to be good but red/blue are not good control colors, and it's hard to chain spells together in those colors combining reactive and proactive spells. I think her and the rest of the cards are unplayable trash. Everything costs 2 mana too many to see play.
Think we're forgetting that Illusory Angel saw no play whatsoever.
Too soon to tell but I don't think its a stretch to say we're looking at another crap set that contributes very little to the game. Based on this I would say no new decks will arise and the decks we have currently will see barely any change, I mean these are really bad cards, look how many hoops the dragon has to leap through to be a 5 mana bad siege rhino, at least give it haste, this is going to be theros/ravnica all over again where the same decks dominate the entire season.
Power level concerns? It would have given things with domain a potential powerup, while nerfing things like coalition victory. It would likely have been pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but it would be another thing for them to balance against in the future, especially if they don't want to put wastes in every set.
Well, unless you only have 2 mana, Reckless Bushwhacker is better than Goblin Bushwhacker when your hand is empty. You likely don't have anything to do with the extra mana, and he has an extra point of power on subsequent turns. This card is pretty solid.This is wrong, I didn't RTFC.
Jori En, Ruin Diveris now my new favorite merfolk (supplanting Sygg, River Cutthroat who while a good deal of fun was not a good deal of um, good...). Don't evaluate her as a 3 drop though, I see her as a 4/5 drop in a deck with a lot of cheap interaction. Tossing her down with 2 open, a probe, a bolt/thought scour and a dispel in hand seems like my kind of party.
Comparative Analysis is interesting, but Inspiration rarely makes the cut, and contorting for an instant speed divination? Well, Artificer's Intuition seems easier to achieve and even that isn't amazing.
Spatial Contortion intrigues me. I've cast a lot of nameless inversions in my day, I wonder how easy the colorless will be to come by in standard.
Deepfathom Stalker feels over developed. Very compelling design but horribly over costed at every point to keep it from seeing play. Maybe if it had built in invasion at least? : / Seems ok in commander though, I might try it out in Thada Adel.
Dread Defiler is one to get me thinking- there are a lot of juicy targets in standard right now for its ability, but I am not sure how best to build towards making it viable. Ramp? kinda light on creatures. Self Mill? might be light on mana. [card]See the Unwritten[card]? hmmm....
You have to draft the Wastes. And can only play the ones you have drafted.
As they show up in two slots at common, that means there will be twice as many chances to get them in the draft. But still when to take them will be a strategic choice.
I've had the impression that BFZ was designed to promote two color deck strategies in eternal constructed formats. The Battle lands do this since they can be better than shock lands in two color decks as two color decks won't be hampered with needing to get out two basics as much as 3+ color decks will be. Then the addition of playable spells that require colorless mana encourage players to use pain lands and filter lands as fixers so they also can have access to colorless mana for stuff like Spacial Contortion (which now beats Complete Disreguard as one of the cheapest ways to deal with Etched Champion).
Colorless spells have the advantage that the colorless-only lands are much more powerful than a colored basic (although they do have the downside of being nonbasic), but lands that produce both colorless and colored mana are typically much worse than two-color duals. The best manabases, even for mono-color decks, typically play no more than 4 colorless sources, which is 6-10 too few to consistently play a 1C spell. To be able to cast your colorless spell, you have to play an otherwise suboptimal manabase and the fixing available to you (painlands, filterlands) is worse than the fixing you get if you wanted to splash an actual color (fetches, shocks, battlelands).
The only popular decks in Modern that can play these cards comfortably are Tron decks, which play 12+ colorless lands already. Notably, tron decks play very few colored cards, none of which require two mana of a single color to cast, and they typically play 4-8 artifacts to help fix colored mana for them. You'll have to make similar sacrifices to play colorless spells like this one, since there's only so many painlands and filters you can realistically get away with.
~ Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
Particularly in Green, where they can still get 'add 1 mana of any color to your mana pool' quite often.
Highly disappointed i must say.
Surge cards seem cool, if you can actually play them with Surge, but the horrible part of the design is, you get a more expensive AND much less usefull card if you pay full-price, and nobody likes expensive cards that do nothing ...
I just dont like the designs in this set, seem lazy, ugly artwork, WotC has to do much better than this, much much better ...
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Actually, not quite; re-read Reckless Bushwhacker. You need to pay its surge cost to get the effect, otherwise it is just a 2/1 haste for 3. If you want the pump for the team, you need to cast another spell before him to get the effect at all, making him pretty dead if your hand is empty and you draw it.
Adding one mana of any color does not help pay for colorless costs, because colorless isn't a color.
Mana Confluence can't pay for the colorless cost of Spatial Contortion.
Making Domain stronger has been something they've wanted to do for years. They've been so close to making a sixth basic land (with type) for years and something keeps holding them back. They always say something about cards like Coalition Victory being affected, well, so what? Old cards get affected by new cards all the time. They should have just bit the bullet and gone all the way with Wastes so that it was a basic land with a basic land type that tapped for colorless.
While I'm glad to see this half-step in the right direction, that's what it is: a half-step.
Mea Culpa. I didn't RTFC properly : / That is worse by a rather large margin. I don't think that makes him unplayable by any means (if a modern port of kuldotha red exists I wouldn't be surprised if they tested this guy out e.g.), but I'm not exactly fired up about him.
Affecting old cards by new cards -- yes. Completely breaking old cards if you're not using the new ones -- no.
The problem with Coalition Victory is that if they made new basic land type, all existing decks that use the card (as few as might be) would stop working.
MaRo had an article about this six years ago:
http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/25
Ultimately, as the great Jára Cimrman has said: You can discuss this, you can even disagree with it, but that's about it.
Cohort is a mechanic that shines is casual constructed. It creates interesting tension between attacking with your creatures and using them for their spell effects as well as choosing who to tap. It does not feel quite like the other ally mechanics but very much makes use of 'team' flavor. By filling a different role than rally and the ETB effects of original Zendikar, it gives your allies something to do when on the battlefield or in the face of things like Torpor Orb. This helps to carve out a more defensive, controlling build for the tribe. This will not likely make a dent in tournament anything, but it gives casual playability to what would otherwise be purely chaff. I vastly prefer things like Munda's Vanguard to deliberate crud like prism array.
Support carves out no new design space is is not really a keyword in the sense of earlier keywords. It is simply a coat of marketing paint over a fairly basic game action. In that its detractors are correct. However, I fail to see how this is harmful to the game or gameplay in any way. They would not put something new or novel in its place, as there is precious little new or novel keyword space left. We are already getting more mechanics than are expected of a small set, be content with the others and recognize that this is not a true mechanic, but a generic game action that would be there anyway. If it hurts you to think that generic game actions now get keywords, ignore the keyword and play the card as you otherwise would.
EDIT: Card tags
This is how I feel too. It makes sense, but it seems a little bit like a nuclear arms race to me. I guess it's too late to undo the easiness of multicolor.
I get how colorless mana works, but I don't buy that they're not more splashable. Yes, fetches, shocks, battlelands are better than painlands and filterlands (not always; certain decks in the past liked Filterlands because they could go from A to BB on turn two when A is an AC land...) but they only provide 2 colors, not 3. If you're looking at C as a color, Mystic Gate and Adarkar Wastes are miles better than Arcane Sanctum. And Tron is far from the only deck that can easily get colorless.
In modern:
-Jund loves filters for hitting double black from an off-color dual.
-Twin can run Desolate Lighthouse, Ghost Quarter, Tectonic Edge on top of pains/filters.
-Burn does want double red, but if it finds a C card worth including, it has the least trouble doing so.
-Amulet Bloom has zero problem getting colorless sources.
-Affinity... lol
-Any tribal deck has Cavern of Souls.
No, no one currently runs enough colorless sources to cast these spells... because they haven't had a reason to. The question will be if it's worth building for or not, but it's CERTAINLY far easier than adding another color. From the looks of the spoilers so far, I would guess that they're keep the majority of C above 4 CMC for this reason. At cheaper costs, even basic effects like Spatial Contortion will certainly see play somewhere, if only for the reason Gut Shot and Hornet Sting have.
Trades
Pucatrade with me!
(Signature courtesy of Argetlam of Hakai Studios
Where do you see two?
Cohort and Support.
Trades
Pucatrade with me!
(Signature courtesy of Argetlam of Hakai Studios
Cohort is an ability word. It has no rules meaning. It's just a word intended to group a set of abilities that have a unifying similarity together and give flavor. I'm the case of Cohort the unifying factor is more than likely " - tap an ally you control" the effect of this one card produces counters. A blue one could be "tap target creature, it doesn't untap during its controllers next upkeep." Etc etc.
Trades
Pucatrade with me!
(Signature courtesy of Argetlam of Hakai Studios