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.
That's just not reasonable. Besides, using the same abilities all the time would get old fast. There are the evegreen keywords for that. Do some of them fall flat? Yes of course. We could happily do without Support. But Cohort is fine. Its just the typical case of magic players and their pathological need to complain.
This was a post I made when someone was complaining about the eternal playability of BFZ mechanics, but it still applies here:
I think it's silly to talk about the "eternal playability" of the BFZ mechanics considering that most mechanics period don't see eternal play.
If you look at the top 50 creatures in Modern, here are the mechanics that appear:
Flash 4
Phyrexian mana* 2
Prowess
Flying 3
Modular
Lifelink 2
Battle Cry
Metalcraft
Haste
Persist
Pro Red 2
Delve
Swampwalk
Cycling 4
Trample 2
Exalted
Deathtouch
Evoke
Indestructible
Landfall
Devotion
Outside of cycling (and Phyrexian mana if we consider that a mechanic) all of the multi-use keywords are or were evergreen mechanics at some point. Which means for every other one of these, you basically could have just written the card without using a keyword or ability word and it wouldn't change much for eternal play.
So from a competitive standpoint, who cares if ingest is just an enabler for processors?
If you're not playing limited or casual, the fact that each set has a +1/+1 counter theme shouldn't bother you. Is Support dumb? It's kind of simple and doesn't seem to have a ton of play to it, but I also don't think it will be the showcase mechanic of the set either. Cohort and Surge could be fun. Colorless requirements will definitely see play. So there's one meh mechanic. Who cares?
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.
That's just not reasonable. Besides, using the same abilities all the time would get old fast. There are the evegreen keywords for that. Do some of them fall flat? Yes of course. We could happily do without Support. But Cohort is fine. Its just the typical case of magic players and their pathological need to complain.
As a habitual bemoaner, I will say two things:
1. Cohort is fine. It's not my cup of tea for a mechanic (As I'm not much a fan of allies), but I can see its relevance. The card shown isn't particulaly good (As it's a 3/3 for 5 that has an ability that requires a second dude that shares a creature type, *and* can't be used till turn six, which also taps it and the other creature down), but the ability seems fine enough and one I don't have any particular dislike of.
2. Support is probably the most disappointing use of +1/+1 counters I've seen, and it's starting to get stale seeing +1/+1 counter abilities nearly every set; add onto this that this ability is pretty much just a +1/+1 counter ability, and it really is disconcerting. I'd like them to step away from +1/+1 counters, at least as a mechanical theme, for a bit. It's starting to get old.
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... 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.
The comparison is not between painlands/filters and trilands but between those and fetchland manabases, since fetches count as three-color lands when evaluating the manabase as a whole. (This is why trilands see much less play in Standard now than before BFZ.) With fetches, splashing a colored card is much easier than splashing a colorless card. To splash a green card in a R/U deck, for example, all you need to do is add one Breeding Pool or Stomping Ground (or one of each) and suddenly you have 9-12 sources of that color off fetches. To splash a colorless card, you need to work 8-14 non-fetchable lands into your manabase somehow. It's doable, but it's not pretty.
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.
Affinity does play enough colorless sources (12) to play colorless spells, but since they're not artifacts, it's unlikely they'd be interested. As for the others, Amulet Bloom plays the most colorless sources, at 4-6. That's at least 4 too few. See Frank Karsten's article for some guidelines.
Gut Shot has no color requirements at all, so it's completely incomparable. Hornet Sting apparently saw play, which surprised me, but only in decks with 10+ green sources, which is not surprising.
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"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
1. Cohort is fine. It's not my cup of tea for a mechanic (As I'm not much a fan of allies), but I can see its relevance. The card shown isn't particulaly good (As it's a 3/3 for 5 that has an ability that requires a second dude that shares a creature type, *and* can't be used till turn six, which also taps it and the other creature down), but the ability seems fine enough and one I don't have any particular dislike of.
2. Support is probably the most disappointing use of +1/+1 counters I've seen, and it's starting to get stale seeing +1/+1 counter abilities nearly every set; add onto this that this ability is pretty much just a +1/+1 counter ability, and it really is disconcerting. I'd like them to step away from +1/+1 counters, at least as a mechanical theme, for a bit. It's starting to get old.
Don't get me wrong. I'd like to see some -1/-1 counters too but no one should be fooling themselves into thinking that we're ever going to see a set that doesn't have one or the other. +1/+1 counters are one of their most popular and versatile tools.
I know the mechanics are boring and the cards large yawn worthy but that Jori En looks insane... Right?
Well... no. She's reasonable. She'll only get you one extra card a turn . Now it being every turn, not just your own is nice. I just like being rewarded for casting lots of spells.
What I will reply on is not the power level or mechanics of the cards but their sheer nonsense as we all know where the power level lies.
spatial contortion Nameless inversion for the colorless. Not much improvement as it isn't even an eldrazi spell. The flavortext makes no sense since the Eldrazi have been given physical form for the sole purpose of denying them the power to reach the blind eternities. How would they have that power???
Comparative analysis
I think R&D accidentally mistyped the card name with one of those statistical methods.
Jace already had a conversation with Ugin about the Hedrons yet he is still trying to... do something... It's like that one guy you keep telling him it won't work, then he turns around and after agreeing with you, still tries to make it work.
Reckless Bushwhacker
Quite a safe card with the costs. Hey at least he moved on from ambushing travelers to becoming an ally!
Tyrant of Valakut
"The dragon needs more horns."
There was a disagreement between the artist and the devs on that statement.
Scion summoner
The first BfZ set had fabulous names that were very ironic to the set.
I think they needed to sac a guy for the last set and took out the name rater.
The quality of this set is very bad.
The names are bad.
The art is almost all digitized (very rough).
The mechanics are... more of the same since theros!
I haven't seen landfall yet...
Even their most word polluted card is underwhelming...
Digital paintings are still paintings. Sure, excessive loldigital effects are always bad (spatial contortion lol daarken wat r u doin) but I think tyrant of valakut, for instance, is painted really well. Making those different kinds of scattered light believable is not easy.
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.
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
The quality of this set is very bad.
The names are bad.
The art is almost all digitized (very rough).
The mechanics are... more of the same since theros!
I haven't seen landfall yet...
Even their most word polluted card is underwhelming...
39/184 cards spoiled.
Nice hyperbole. Always gotta get the "this set is bad" when around 20-30 cards of a 200 card set has been spoiled. So ******* sick of this ***** every single spoiler season. What the **** is wrong with you clowns when you go on the internet?
Try waiting until the entire set is released, then play it in drafts repeatedly, then form an opinion. Otherwise get bent. Haven't you idiots figured this out yet?
Public Mod Note
(LouCypher):
Warning for Flaming - LouCypher.
Digital paintings are still paintings. Sure, excessive loldigital effects are always bad (spatial contortion lol daarken wat r u doin) but I think tyrant of valakut, for instance, is painted really well. Making those different kinds of scattered light believable is not easy.
I was referring to the style on Walker of the wastes This is 1990 quality rendering right there.
I agree the tyrant style is good. I have no idea how it feeds seeing as the horns are in the way though.
I actually like Cohort, simply because it's rare under WotC's current design philosophy to see activated effects that don't have huge mana costs tacked onto them.
So it was confusing to have 1 on lands that both produced colorless mana and had activated abilities that required paying generic mana? They didn't think Shambling Vent was too confusing.
I really like that waste mana turns pain lands into tri-lands, which is an underrated land cycle to begin with. Which means spatial contortion will mix up some mana bases. Perhaps make pain lands modern viable for the budget player.
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.
The only thing I can think of is maybe legacy goblins? Off a goblin warchief his surge cost is only R, which is reasonable though the haste is now superlative. Probably not good enough for the offensive bonus really.
I still have no idea why they chose to have <> represent colorless mana in the second set of BFZ block. It is going to make opening cards in the first set like Hedron Archive extremely confusing to new players who just started playing limited. They should have introduced <> in the first set of the block even if they decided to leave out costs that specifically required <>, just to make drafting both sets more intuitive for beginners.
6 PAGES in and no one mentioned what's red about Jori En? She's ok but the design philosophy is what bugs me. There's no reason for her to be red, except for the fact she's made for EDH. She definitely should have something red about her.
You don't need to design specifically for EDH. The cards will naturally go to EDH if they're good enough.
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.
That's just not reasonable. Besides, using the same abilities all the time would get old fast. There are the evegreen keywords for that. Do some of them fall flat? Yes of course. We could happily do without Support. But Cohort is fine. Its just the typical case of magic players and their pathological need to complain.
Why is it unreasonable to want Wizards to continue interesting/fun/good mechanics for more than one block instead of replacing them with some useless mechanic that doesn't even need to exist just so they can say the set has a new mechanic? I'm not saying Wizards should NEVER make new abilities. New abilities are fine as long as they do something unique and don't replace other unique abilities that were just introduced one set ago. What annoys me is when Wizards introduces a fun/good mechanic/ability in one set of a block, then completely forgets it in favor of some new unnecessary mechanic in the next set of the block (or just does away with it completely). I don't know for sure if Landfall, Rally and Process/Ingest are coming back yet. If they are? Great! Then I'll let Cohort and +1/+1 counter ability #27 slide. If not, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about that makes me angry. Why can't Wizards just continue to expand upon the mechanics from the first block? Rally is the essence of Ally tribal. Let's see some more cool Rally cards! Landfall is one of my favorite mechanics and is a big part of what makes Zendikar. How about some more Landfall triggered cards so Landfall decks can be a thing? Process was looking to be a pretty interesting mechanic, but it needs more support in the form of some good, cheap creatures with process triggers and maybe some more ingest/exile spells.
That's all I want. For Wizards to keep supporting the good mechanics throughout a block. Also for them to stop coming up with ways to make +1/+1 counters into a new mechanic.
6 PAGES in and no one mentioned what's red about Jori En? She's ok but the design philosophy is what bugs me. There's no reason for her to be red, except for the fact she's made for EDH. She definitely should have something red about her.
You don't need to design specifically for EDH. The cards will naturally go to EDH if they're good enough.
I agree completely with this. I was really looking forward to her being something playable in modern/legacy Merfolk, but this really blows. I like her as a card, though. I just wish she were some kind of 1/4 with a relevant effect (potentially this?).
I know this is really premature, but holy god, how did the same company that put out the beautiful Khans of Tarkir block that created what was widely regarded as one of the most diverse, interesting, enjoyable Standard formats of all time follow that up with this???
No wonder they were so pissed about the leaks. They knew how mailed in most of the mechanics and cards in the set were, and the spoiled mythics took away their redeeming hype bombs. There's literally one truly interesting card in that whole pile to me (the +3/-3 1C instant, which is a significant incentive to want a lot of {C} lands).
6 PAGES in and no one mentioned what's red about Jori En? She's ok but the design philosophy is what bugs me. There's no reason for her to be red, except for the fact she's made for EDH. She definitely should have something red about her.
You don't need to design specifically for EDH. The cards will naturally go to EDH if they're good enough.
There's no reason to play her in EDH over Nin. This card is just bad on all fronts
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That's just not reasonable. Besides, using the same abilities all the time would get old fast. There are the evegreen keywords for that. Do some of them fall flat? Yes of course. We could happily do without Support. But Cohort is fine. Its just the typical case of magic players and their pathological need to complain.
If you're not playing limited or casual, the fact that each set has a +1/+1 counter theme shouldn't bother you. Is Support dumb? It's kind of simple and doesn't seem to have a ton of play to it, but I also don't think it will be the showcase mechanic of the set either. Cohort and Surge could be fun. Colorless requirements will definitely see play. So there's one meh mechanic. Who cares?
As a habitual bemoaner, I will say two things:
1. Cohort is fine. It's not my cup of tea for a mechanic (As I'm not much a fan of allies), but I can see its relevance. The card shown isn't particulaly good (As it's a 3/3 for 5 that has an ability that requires a second dude that shares a creature type, *and* can't be used till turn six, which also taps it and the other creature down), but the ability seems fine enough and one I don't have any particular dislike of.
2. Support is probably the most disappointing use of +1/+1 counters I've seen, and it's starting to get stale seeing +1/+1 counter abilities nearly every set; add onto this that this ability is pretty much just a +1/+1 counter ability, and it really is disconcerting. I'd like them to step away from +1/+1 counters, at least as a mechanical theme, for a bit. It's starting to get old.
Affinity does play enough colorless sources (12) to play colorless spells, but since they're not artifacts, it's unlikely they'd be interested. As for the others, Amulet Bloom plays the most colorless sources, at 4-6. That's at least 4 too few. See Frank Karsten's article for some guidelines.
Gut Shot has no color requirements at all, so it's completely incomparable. Hornet Sting apparently saw play, which surprised me, but only in decks with 10+ green sources, which is not surprising.
~ Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
Don't get me wrong. I'd like to see some -1/-1 counters too but no one should be fooling themselves into thinking that we're ever going to see a set that doesn't have one or the other. +1/+1 counters are one of their most popular and versatile tools.
EDH:
Niv-Mizzet
Legacy:
The Rack
Modern
Venser, the Sojourner Control
Well... no. She's reasonable. She'll only get you one extra card a turn . Now it being every turn, not just your own is nice. I just like being rewarded for casting lots of spells.
I can only hope so, it has been some time since -1/-1 counters has been seen part of a set or block.
spatial contortion
Nameless inversion for the colorless. Not much improvement as it isn't even an eldrazi spell. The flavortext makes no sense since the Eldrazi have been given physical form for the sole purpose of denying them the power to reach the blind eternities. How would they have that power???
walker of the wastes
It's a bee.
Comparative analysis
I think R&D accidentally mistyped the card name with one of those statistical methods.
Jace already had a conversation with Ugin about the Hedrons yet he is still trying to... do something... It's like that one guy you keep telling him it won't work, then he turns around and after agreeing with you, still tries to make it work.
Reckless Bushwhacker
Quite a safe card with the costs. Hey at least he moved on from ambushing travelers to becoming an ally!
Tyrant of Valakut
"The dragon needs more horns."
There was a disagreement between the artist and the devs on that statement.
Scion summoner
The first BfZ set had fabulous names that were very ironic to the set.
I think they needed to sac a guy for the last set and took out the name rater.
The quality of this set is very bad.
The names are bad.
The art is almost all digitized (very rough).
The mechanics are... more of the same since theros!
I haven't seen landfall yet...
Even their most word polluted card is underwhelming...
RETIRED - GAME SUCKS
Modern:
UUUMerfolksUUU
RGoblinsR
Ad Nauseam
BR 8 Racks RB
WUB Mill BUW
Legacy:
XOps! All splels! X
What I think of MaRo
Digital paintings are still paintings. Sure, excessive loldigital effects are always bad (spatial contortion lol daarken wat r u doin) but I think tyrant of valakut, for instance, is painted really well. Making those different kinds of scattered light believable is not easy.
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
Click here and check out my Formerly Pauper Cube.
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
39/184 cards spoiled.
Nice hyperbole. Always gotta get the "this set is bad" when around 20-30 cards of a 200 card set has been spoiled. So ******* sick of this ***** every single spoiler season. What the **** is wrong with you clowns when you go on the internet?
Try waiting until the entire set is released, then play it in drafts repeatedly, then form an opinion. Otherwise get bent. Haven't you idiots figured this out yet?
I agree the tyrant style is good. I have no idea how it feeds seeing as the horns are in the way though.
RETIRED - GAME SUCKS
Modern:
UUUMerfolksUUU
RGoblinsR
Ad Nauseam
BR 8 Racks RB
WUB Mill BUW
Legacy:
XOps! All splels! X
What I think of MaRo
Oh come on. If you apply this kind of thinking, everything in the fantasy genre is dumb. EVERYTHING.
Your mods are terrified of me.
The only thing I can think of is maybe legacy goblins? Off a goblin warchief his surge cost is only R, which is reasonable though the haste is now superlative. Probably not good enough for the offensive bonus really.
You don't need to design specifically for EDH. The cards will naturally go to EDH if they're good enough.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Why is it unreasonable to want Wizards to continue interesting/fun/good mechanics for more than one block instead of replacing them with some useless mechanic that doesn't even need to exist just so they can say the set has a new mechanic? I'm not saying Wizards should NEVER make new abilities. New abilities are fine as long as they do something unique and don't replace other unique abilities that were just introduced one set ago. What annoys me is when Wizards introduces a fun/good mechanic/ability in one set of a block, then completely forgets it in favor of some new unnecessary mechanic in the next set of the block (or just does away with it completely). I don't know for sure if Landfall, Rally and Process/Ingest are coming back yet. If they are? Great! Then I'll let Cohort and +1/+1 counter ability #27 slide. If not, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about that makes me angry. Why can't Wizards just continue to expand upon the mechanics from the first block? Rally is the essence of Ally tribal. Let's see some more cool Rally cards! Landfall is one of my favorite mechanics and is a big part of what makes Zendikar. How about some more Landfall triggered cards so Landfall decks can be a thing? Process was looking to be a pretty interesting mechanic, but it needs more support in the form of some good, cheap creatures with process triggers and maybe some more ingest/exile spells.
That's all I want. For Wizards to keep supporting the good mechanics throughout a block. Also for them to stop coming up with ways to make +1/+1 counters into a new mechanic.
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I agree completely with this. I was really looking forward to her being something playable in modern/legacy Merfolk, but this really blows. I like her as a card, though. I just wish she were some kind of 1/4 with a relevant effect (potentially this?).
No wonder they were so pissed about the leaks. They knew how mailed in most of the mechanics and cards in the set were, and the spoiled mythics took away their redeeming hype bombs. There's literally one truly interesting card in that whole pile to me (the +3/-3 1C instant, which is a significant incentive to want a lot of {C} lands).
Just release the full set already.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
There's no reason to play her in EDH over Nin. This card is just bad on all fronts