If he needs a Planar Bridge, he is either stuck on Amonkhet, wants to go to a plane that is sealed to him (Return to Ulgrotha!) or he is looking for a way to invade other Planes with his armies.
Crew is an incredible terrible mechanic as it uses the creatures "power" to work.
That alone makes it pretty blant, as all the vehicles with larger than crew 2 are almost unplayable simply because activating them is so terrible (obvisious bombs in mythic ignored).
Crew 1 is pretty much the real deal, and this makes the mechanic very flat , even more so that 0 power creatures cannot crew in any reasonable way, which further reduces its usefullness (not that 0 power creatures are "good" to begin with ... ).
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Would they have used the mechanic as they made it (Tap X creatures to Crew X , no power required) , it would be WAY more reasonable and would work way better overall.
WotC simply failed the mechanic ...
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Having "some" vehicles might be a thing, but in the end, the vehicles we have seen so far are quite the "machines" , some random boat or otherwise basic vehicle might not really reflect the power it would need to have ...
Thats how it was at first but they changed it becasue it led to unfun gameplay.
Also how are vehciles failed ifthey are thr most beloved mechanic of thethe block and quite popular as a mechanic overall?
Also why do people say the Gatewatch winning is some kimd of storytellimg flaw whenthe good guys winning is something that happens in the overwhelming majority of stories?
Very few heroic rales end with the bad guys winning. Star Wars, Lotr, Harry Potter, Superman, Batman, Star Trek, The Avengers, The Legend of Zelda, Terminator 1 and 2, hell even Mad Max hsd the bad guy loose.
Thats how it was at first but they changed it becasue it led to unfun gameplay.
If crew 3 would just translate to tap 3 creatures it would obvisiously be terrible, but the requirement on the creatures power is stupid, and its a flavour fail (why need strength to drive a vehicle ? Its stupid).
Especially with the 0 power creatures in the set, the mechanic simply fails in that department.
Also how are vehciles failed ifthey are thr most beloved mechanic of thethe block and quite popular as a mechanic overall?
Vehicles in general are obvisiously not a bad idea, its just the mechanics implementation as it is, that could be much better, but they decided to go with the inferior version of the mechanic (in almost any case, you tap 1 creature to crew a vehicle anyway, so all these could just be tap 1 creature, only the super huge vehicles, might need more than 1 creature to drive them, which again makes sence in flavour, for big flagships and the like and the mechanic would just become universally more useful and lose absolutely nothing).
As it is, crew simply doesnt work in sets that have 0 power creatures, which is a completly unnecessary restriction they put on themself for no reason at all other than "thats how as it is".
Also why do people say the Gatewatch winning is some kimd of storytellimg flaw whenthe good guys winning is something that happens in the overwhelming majority of stories?
The most important aspect of a story is that the heroes actually "struggle" and have some weakness. If they make an enemie that is the ABSOLUTE world eating monsters that annihilate entire planets and eat ALL the life , (just let that sink in, on what "level" of enemie we are looking at here!) , and you defeat them in a extremly silly, short battle and nobody dies, nothing happens, they just "win".
Such a cheap win makes all the upcomming opponents look like idiots, as none of them is even comparable in power to an Eldrazi (even Nicol Bolas is "just" a strong planeswalker, but Emrakul was stronger than him in many ways).
Its a permanent damage to fire of your strongest enemie and make it look like a "joke".
Very few heroic rales end with the bad guys winning. Star Wars, Lotr, Harry Potter, Superman, Batman, Star Trek, The Avengers, The Legend of Zelda, Terminator 1 and 2, hell even Mad Max hsd the bad guy loose.
Ofcourse, theres no problem with heroes winning, if they suffer enough, and it has a meaning.
The Eldrazi suffered a total defeat, all 3 of them are beat, thats ridiculous silly, as these kinds of opponents should never be beaten in the first place (imprisoned ok, but "beaten" is just stupid).
Its like you have your hero "beat" a nuclear bomb and just stop the explosion by force of will ; thats how silly it is, and it makes the story look stupid, if your solution to such HUGE problems is just "snap your finger, problem solved".
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If the Eldrazi would simply have destroyed Zendikar, it would have a meaning, it would "matter".
Planeswalker can just leave the plane, rescue some people in some way or another, but them beating the Eldrazi in direct combat, it was so completly silly, i cannot even put it in words ...
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To compare it, the struggle in the Invasion block against the invading Phyrexian Forces took several blocks as a build up story. You "really" cared for the heroes and they couldnt just beat the opponent, it was a long struggle and required a lot of planning, luck and involved several powerful (old) planeswalkers in epic LONG battles to just avoid the invasion and blow the phyrexians up (and they still where not fully beaten, and it had a REAL damage, Urza was killed, a lot of characters died, and it made the story matter deeply).
As they do it now, you have a 2 set block, 1 is kind of a setup, then something happens and chaos breaks out and just after that the problem is solved and its over.
These stories have NO MEANING at all, they are so short, theres no struggle, there nothing, its just silly and the "solutions" are so terrible idiotic, that its ridiculous that the Gatewatch isnt dead already.
They wasted the story so much, its not even funny ... (they just fail to make the enemie matter, the focus on the gatewatch is such a deep mistake, as anything that happens now looks just stupid, as you always have to question why they could beat something like an Eldrazi so easily, which should never be possible at all!)
Question: Why would he need a planar device if 'all he wants to do' is to travel between planes? He must need the planar bridge for other means like transporting armies etc.
We know Bolas has been behind many schemes and that he wants to return to his former power and once again become immortal. But is there more?
Given the history, it would be a perfect device to get the Phyrexians to Ravnica.
Just like in the past Planar Portal were used to invade Dominaria.
Tezzeret was on Mirrodin as Bolas Agent, so it would be the easiest solution (and its kinda so easy, that its probably true, to make a "return to phyrexia" set viable in some time in the future).
All the planeswalkers dont care for the Planar Bridge (as they can planeswalk anyway, theres no use for them), but its a huge thing for the Phyrexian, which otherwise cannot planeswalk and they are a force that can beat planeswalkers up (even could stand up against the old walkers, so good luck fighting a entire world of them that will infect countless other worlds before you can even react).
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Bolas might find a way to control the Phyrexian , or just unleash them on whatever plane he doesnt like (Ravnica and the Infinite Consortium are kind of a pain for Nicol Bolas, so unleash Phyrexia on them).
Just Remember Nicol Bolas doesn't show interest in a plane unless it is a massive mana source or houses something that could further his own power and agenda. Either way I hope Bolas rips the gatewatch apart and uses the gods to do it.
Breaking news: Razaketh is from Amonkhet. So I guess, Belzenlock may be from Atlazhan and these two blocks may have a subtheme - Liliana dealing with two last demons (Returned onakke from Shandalar included if we will be lucky enough).
0 power creatures are such a small percentage of creatures in most any set to say that vehicles dont work in any set with them is silly.
And pulling a quote here:
Development played with Vehicles for many weeks and started to see a problem. The reliance on having a certain number of creatures heavily rewarded you for having a lot of small creatures, especially tokens (this ties into the last mechanic, fabricate, which I will get to in a bit). Because the Vehicles worked so efficiently with tokens, development had to cost the Vehicles assuming you had tokens, and then they ended up being too expensive to work with anything but a token strategy.
Meanwhile, I was busy designing Ham, the fall (northern hemisphere) set of 2017. At the halfway point of Kaladesh design, I handed the reins of the set over to Shawn Main so I could start working on the design for Amonkhet, the large set of the next block. And then halfway through Amonkhet design, I handed the reins over to Ethan Fleischer so I could work on Ham. In Ham, we were working on a new mechanic that I was worried felt too much like Vehicles because it required having a certain number of creatures to activate it. To try and distance my mechanic from Vehicles, I changed it so instead of caring about how many creatures you had, it cared about the total power of the creatures you had. We tested with it and I really liked how it played.
From time to time I poke my head back into sets that I had previously handed off. Kaladesh was in development, so I talked with Ian Duke and Erik Lauer, the co-leads for Kaladesh development. They explained that they were having a problem with Vehicles. As they walked through their problem, it dawned on me that my solution for the Ham mechanic might actually work in Kaladesh. Instead of "crew 5" meaning you have to tap five creatures, it would mean you have to tap any number of creatures whose power added up to 5 or more.
The developers thought the idea was interesting and tried it out. It turned out to be a wonderful solution, because a high crew number no longer meant you had to have a deck with a whole bunch of tokens. Now, you could just play a deck with bigger creatures and not have any tokens
If crewing us based on creature number and not power it means its only viable in a deck you spam full of creatures, preferably ones with a cheap go wide style, making them based on power means they become viable in more types of decks than just go wide ones.
Any deck can get 3 power on the board, getting 3 creatures is a more narrow thing.
And making it poeer based means it has a "mix and match " element that fits KLDs invention theme. You can go wide, tall or any mix of the two to turn vehciles on. Pump spells and counters now work, and also you dont have to cost every Dragon Fodder type effect like it could turn into a 3 turn clock with one colorless.
Any deck can get 3 power on the board, getting 3 creatures is a more narrow thing.
Thats clearly only the case if we just stupidly take crew 3 and make it a choice between either 3 power or 3 creatures.
But lets face it, all the vehicles that are reasonable have crew 1 (or crew 2 at least, which is pretty much the power any creature that isnt a token will provide, at least in limited).
Crew 3 is allready such a high cost, you simply dont have a creature with power 3 all the time, its in no way easier to archive than having 2 creatures, and a 3 power creature has an inherent value , the biggest selling point of vehicles is to make even the crappiest tokens ready to fight.
The vehicles with very high crew cost are complety trash, even in Limited they play incredible bad (ever used the crew 4+ vehicles ? They stink a lot, downright terrible in Limited and completly trash in constructed).
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Almost any vehicle should have crew 1 and it would play completly fine, having even 1 creature and need to tap it every turn is a "real" cost. Something special like a flagship can need more, but that should be a real exception (as face it, theres not many vehicles in real life that would require more than 1 person to work it, thats only the case for extremly huge ships and the like).
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I know and i can see there points, but in the end, vehicles would be much more universally usefull if they just stick to crew 1 and keep it at that (in almost any case it would play the same, you still want to tap 2 small creatures instead of one with high power and theres almost nothing in Kaladesh that has more than 3 power and isnt a high end big creature itself, and big creatures shouldnt drive in vehicles that are even smaller then they are , its a flavour fail to have a giant dragon in a tiny vehicle, funny, but still stupid).
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And making it poeer based means it has a "mix and match " element that fits KLDs invention theme. You can go wide, tall or any mix of the two to turn vehciles on. Pump spells and counters now work, and also you dont have to cost every Dragon Fodder type effect like it could turn into a 3 turn clock with one colorless.
Its a poor men excuse. Ofcourse they will badly sell vehicles as thematic, and they are, i am totally on board that vehicles are a great thing for a inventors theme, but "crew" as a mechanic as they did it, using "power" is just inferior as it restricts way too much (theres simply not that many big creatures you want to play to begin with, as vehicles ARE the big creatures that should support smaller creatures instead of big ones).
Anyway, in the end you can tap multiple creatures to "still" crew, but even Kaladesh features 0 power creatures, and its terrible to have them with a mechanic that completly doesnt work with them at all (and thats a fail).
So if you ask me, all vehicles with crew 1 , play exactly like i would invision it, and guess what, they are the very best of the vehicles (surprise surprise) as they work with any deck that has creatures at all.
The vehicles felt like an experiment to make a safer alternative to equipment, but it sort of backfired. There's a reason that Heart of Kiran just isn't very good despite being the best two drop vehicle now that smuggler's copter got banned. The really good vehicle is Aethersphere Harvester, which fits a lot more roles than the airship and feels very much like Batterskull in the sky. In any case, I don't think vehicles are surviving post rotation outside of smugglers and maybe harvester / caravan. Sword of Fire and Ice is arguably the best piece of equipment that is modern legal and it only sees fringe play.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The vehicles felt like an experiment to make a safer alternative to equipment, but it sort of backfired. There's a reason that Heart of Kiran just isn't very good despite being the best two drop vehicle now that smuggler's copter got banned. The really good vehicle is Aethersphere Harvester, which fits a lot more roles than the airship and feels very much like Batterskull in the sky. In any case, I don't think vehicles are surviving post rotation outside of smugglers and maybe harvester / caravan. Sword of Fire and Ice is arguably the best piece of equipment that is modern legal and it only sees fringe play.
Well the abundance of artifact hate certainly doesnt help to make any playable in modern (theres affinity, and anything that doesnt fit in affinity will struggle against the same hate).
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Kolaghan's Command did almost single handily made all the artifacts unplayable trash , as they suddenly packed main-deck hate and just "cantrip" killed your artifact while doing whatever else they wanted to do with the spell in the first place.
Abrupt Decay also is a catch-all for the good artifacts that cost 3 or less, which is almost any equipment.
And Stoneforge Mystic being banned, certainly doesnt help to make any more expensive equipment playable.
So yes, Modern is pretty much the most hostile environment for artifacts there is.
The vehicles felt like an experiment to make a safer alternative to equipment, but it sort of backfired. There's a reason that Heart of Kiran just isn't very good despite being the best two drop vehicle now that smuggler's copter got banned. The really good vehicle is Aethersphere Harvester, which fits a lot more roles than the airship and feels very much like Batterskull in the sky. In any case, I don't think vehicles are surviving post rotation outside of smugglers and maybe harvester / caravan. Sword of Fire and Ice is arguably the best piece of equipment that is modern legal and it only sees fringe play.
Well the abundance of artifact hate certainly doesnt help to make any playable in modern (theres affinity, and anything that doesnt fit in affinity will struggle against the same hate).
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Kolaghan's Command did almost single handily made all the artifacts unplayable trash , as they suddenly packed main-deck hate and just "cantrip" killed your artifact while doing whatever else they wanted to do with the spell in the first place.
Abrupt Decay also is a catch-all for the good artifacts that cost 3 or less, which is almost any equipment.
And Stoneforge Mystic being banned, certainly doesnt help to make any more expensive equipment playable.
So yes, Modern is pretty much the most hostile environment for artifacts there is.
I was actually thinking of frontier, but yeah they got Kolaghan's Command in the format which is always a good play when it comes down (at least that is how it felt playing against it).
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The vehicles felt like an experiment to make a safer alternative to equipment, but it sort of backfired. There's a reason that Heart of Kiran just isn't very good despite being the best two drop vehicle now that smuggler's copter got banned. The really good vehicle is Aethersphere Harvester, which fits a lot more roles than the airship and feels very much like Batterskull in the sky. In any case, I don't think vehicles are surviving post rotation outside of smugglers and maybe harvester / caravan. Sword of Fire and Ice is arguably the best piece of equipment that is modern legal and it only sees fringe play.
You do have a point, vehicles do seem like a different take on equipment, I was just realizing we hadn't had a decent piece of equipment since SoM block/Runechanter's Pike. Personally I would have liked "mounts" where a creature could equipped to another creature, almost like Bestow, with the usual creature being equipped can't attack. Past that Crew definitely suffers from anything 3 or higher is practically unusable, thanks to a creature that has power 3 or greater might just be better than the vehicle itself. Vehicles that can do something outside of a being a creature definitely have a better shot at being played.
On a side note There really should have been a Crew 0 vehicle, like a bicycle. Really simple vehicles like that.
Flavourwise people assume at first that the driver is actually "in" the vehicle and destroying the vehicle would also kill the driver, which would make sence (all that "banding" stuff).
However, here, the driver just turns the vehicle on, and doesnt drive it at all.
Which means it makes sence for some high-tech tanks and the like, but if you want something that actually is transporting the driver, you would have Equipment (a bike that accelerates the creature would best be implemented as a Equipment that gives haste and such and that could be very cheap and all creatures could use it, regardless of power).
Just Remember Nicol Bolas doesn't show interest in a plane unless it is a massive mana source or houses something that could further his own power and agenda. Either way I hope Bolas rips the gatewatch apart and uses the gods to do it.
Well, if they go that route than it feels almost like they are trying a Zendikar 2.0 in that they have a plane that houses some kind of ancient power / evil, a force that seeks to foolishly try to use the power, and then mistakenly unleashes the apocalypse and nearly destroys an entire plane of existence doing so. Which, actually sort of makes sense for an egyptian set considering everyone probably remembers movies like The Mummy, where Imohtep is a vengeful all powerful undead abomination seeking to restore himself to life and take vengeance on the ancestors of the pharaoh that spited him.
Nicol Bolas is powerful, but he isn't going to be able to stop something like Imhotep. That's a being that literally can bring about biblical level natural disasters, like turn the river red, rain frogs, conjure massive unyielding sandstorms, summon swarms of flesh eating Locusts, command an army of undead servants, and can basically steal the life of other beings by touch. Basically, smash an OP liliana together with Vengeful Pharaoh and Ugin, the spirit dragon. That's about him in card form.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I want my Umezawa's Jitte modern playable. I got it in that old rats starter deck that they had at the time and when I think on it, it really feels surreal that it's now one of the most powerful cards in magic.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Just Remember Nicol Bolas doesn't show interest in a plane unless it is a massive mana source or houses something that could further his own power and agenda. Either way I hope Bolas rips the gatewatch apart and uses the gods to do it.
Well, if they go that route than it feels almost like they are trying a Zendikar 2.0 in that they have a plane that houses some kind of ancient power / evil, a force that seeks to foolishly try to use the power, and then mistakenly unleashes the apocalypse and nearly destroys an entire plane of existence doing so. Which, actually sort of makes sense for an egyptian set considering everyone probably remembers movies like The Mummy, where Imohtep is a vengeful all powerful undead abomination seeking to restore himself to life and take vengeance on the ancestors of the pharaoh that spited him.
Nicol Bolas is powerful, but he isn't going to be able to stop something like Imhotep. That's a being that literally can bring about biblical level natural disasters, like turn the river red, rain frogs, conjure massive unyielding sandstorms, summon swarms of flesh eating Locusts, command an army of undead servants, and can basically steal the life of other beings by touch. Basically, smash an OP liliana together with Vengeful Pharaoh and Ugin, the spirit dragon. That's about him in card form.
I disagree. I think Nicol Bolas is likely more powerful than a God only based on how Theros gods were bound to their plane. Knowing this I feel like Nicol Bolas has a huge advantage considering he's lived on multiple planes and can even rend a plane of its mana entirely.
Just Remember Nicol Bolas doesn't show interest in a plane unless it is a massive mana source or houses something that could further his own power and agenda. Either way I hope Bolas rips the gatewatch apart and uses the gods to do it.
Well, if they go that route than it feels almost like they are trying a Zendikar 2.0 in that they have a plane that houses some kind of ancient power / evil, a force that seeks to foolishly try to use the power, and then mistakenly unleashes the apocalypse and nearly destroys an entire plane of existence doing so. Which, actually sort of makes sense for an egyptian set considering everyone probably remembers movies like The Mummy, where Imohtep is a vengeful all powerful undead abomination seeking to restore himself to life and take vengeance on the ancestors of the pharaoh that spited him.
Nicol Bolas is powerful, but he isn't going to be able to stop something like Imhotep. That's a being that literally can bring about biblical level natural disasters, like turn the river red, rain frogs, conjure massive unyielding sandstorms, summon swarms of flesh eating Locusts, command an army of undead servants, and can basically steal the life of other beings by touch. Basically, smash an OP liliana together with Vengeful Pharaoh and Ugin, the spirit dragon. That's about him in card form.
I disagree. I think Nicol Bolas is likely more powerful than a God only based on how Theros gods were bound to their plane. Knowing this I feel like Nicol Bolas has a huge advantage considering he's lived on multiple planes and can even rend a plane of its mana entirely.
They can make it go either way, but walkers aren't by their nature more powerful than native gods and beings, they primarily have the advantage of being able to run away from said native gods and beings and potentially bring tools from other worlds that can deal with those beings. Also, I doubt Nicol Bolas is one to throw down for a battle to the death with anything remotely powerful enough to actually give him trouble, even if he can win if he really put his full might against said being.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The vehicles felt like an experiment to make a safer alternative to equipment, but it sort of backfired. There's a reason that Heart of Kiran just isn't very good despite being the best two drop vehicle now that smuggler's copter got banned. The really good vehicle is Aethersphere Harvester, which fits a lot more roles than the airship and feels very much like Batterskull in the sky. In any case, I don't think vehicles are surviving post rotation outside of smugglers and maybe harvester / caravan. Sword of Fire and Ice is arguably the best piece of equipment that is modern legal and it only sees fringe play.
Well that's a little bit unfair towards equipment. It's not the case that every piece of equipment is terrible. The main reason why Sword of Fire and Ice is the best legal equipment in modern is because the good pieces of equiment (looking at you Umezawa's Jitte and at you Skullclamp) are banned.
Just pointing out vehicles were openly stated by wotc to be an easier to balance version of equipment. Stoddard had a whole article on it.
One of the reasons you have seen fewer and fewer Equipment cards, especially really powerful Equipment, in the last few years is because of how swingy the cards are, and how hard they are to deal with. It's easy to deal with one strong creature, but one strong Equipment turns all of your creatures into major problems for your opponent to deal with. Now, that isn't inherently a problem, especially if the cards are priced well, but we did a very poor job of costing Equipment in our first few sets. A lot of that was just how harsh Mirrodin was toward artifacts, but trying to play against cards like the Swords today is very hard. I think the Swords in Scars of Mirrodin could've cost an additional mana to equip and still seen Standard play...but we kind of needed to match up to the previous cycle.
The problem with Equipment cards is they can easily turn each of your opponent's creatures into basically the same threat. Swords meant you had to deal with protection over and over again. An Equipment card that is very strong against your deck will be almost impossible to beat because of how same-y it makes all of the creatures. Beyond that, the knobs we have on Equipment aren't great because of how unevenly they scale, especially in Limited. Leonin Scimitar is fine, Vulshok Morningstar is hard to beat, and Vulshok Battlegear can easily dominate games in most formats.
While we have no plans to stop making Equipment, we don't make the cards as strong as we make many of our other cards because of how hard Equipment is to interact with. Having to kill every single creature your opponent plays to turn Equipment off is difficult for certain colors or decks.
Vehicles go very much in the opposite direction. We have a ton of knobs with them because of their crew numbers, and we can put a ton of different kinds of abilities on them. Most importantly, your opponent can interact with them once they have been crewed. That means a wide variety of decks can interact with them. It only takes one removal spell at the right time to deal with them, rather than forcing you to kill every creature that becomes equipped.
One of the reasons you have seen fewer and fewer Equipment cards, especially really powerful Equipment, in the last few years is because of how swingy the cards are, and how hard they are to deal with. It's easy to deal with one strong creature, but one strong Equipment turns all of your creatures into major problems for your opponent to deal with. Now, that isn't inherently a problem, especially if the cards are priced well, but we did a very poor job of costing Equipment in our first few sets. A lot of that was just how harsh Mirrodin was toward artifacts, but trying to play against cards like the Swords today is very hard. I think the Swords in Scars of Mirrodin could've cost an additional mana to equip and still seen Standard play...but we kind of needed to match up to the previous cycle.
The problem with Equipment cards is they can easily turn each of your opponent's creatures into basically the same threat. Swords meant you had to deal with protection over and over again. An Equipment card that is very strong against your deck will be almost impossible to beat because of how same-y it makes all of the creatures. Beyond that, the knobs we have on Equipment aren't great because of how unevenly they scale, especially in Limited. Leonin Scimitar is fine, Vulshok Morningstar is hard to beat, and Vulshok Battlegear can easily dominate games in most formats.
While we have no plans to stop making Equipment, we don't make the cards as strong as we make many of our other cards because of how hard Equipment is to interact with. Having to kill every single creature your opponent plays to turn Equipment off is difficult for certain colors or decks.
Vehicles go very much in the opposite direction. We have a ton of knobs with them because of their crew numbers, and we can put a ton of different kinds of abilities on them. Most importantly, your opponent can interact with them once they have been crewed. That means a wide variety of decks can interact with them. It only takes one removal spell at the right time to deal with them, rather than forcing you to kill every creature that becomes equipped.
Even if that is the case that equipment is hard to deal with for certain forms of decks, making equipment intentionally weak to the point that they have been in the last few sets has made them rather easy to ignore outside of extreme synergy. Theros had Godsend, and that felt like the right direction to go with balancing really strong equipment, as the main problem equipment has is that if it is strong and has no color identity it can go in any deck. On top of that, if the card isn't legendary, than it can be had in multiples on the field at any one time. Sword of Fire and Ice, if it was legendary and also costed UR would likely have been fine because the restriction makes it much harder to simply insert. As far as other decks having to deal with a card on that level and not having an answer, I think that's perfectly fine. There has to be win conditions in a game like Magic the Gathering and a powerful, color specific legendary sword really isn't much worse than Sphinx of the Final Word if costed correctly. Not going to argue that having an equip cost of 3 on the original mirrodin swords probably would have been a good idea.
Ultimately though, the important facet to magic that needs to stay alive is the ability for a player to tell a story with their deck and remain competitive. That is something that I don't feel is happening with how the cards are being designed now and stories being hardlined into the card naming and flavor text. If a spell is chandra's, that limits the ability for someone to create a story of their own. I've got a five swords adventure deck built that uses all the legendary swords from Mirrodin, SFM, and Puresteel Paladin. I'd never be able to build something like this with how card sets are being designed now because the story is too engrained.
Well, I probably did enough spilling of the soul on this subject for the next week.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Well i just think that Amonkhet is just dominaria 2.0 (for bolas) as we have seen he owns some part of influence on the plane, maybe he is a god-emperor siting in his chair planning his next plot while the gatewatch invades his plane ( how rude).
For the question: Is Bolas more powerfull than a god? I would say Yes. Kruphix said prety loud that he had couserns with the threats that Elspeth and Ajani where possibly facing, and one of the things was clearly Bolas. Like he never really lost a batle against other being, Ajani? Yeah, he got a chalenge against a Avatar mirroring hinself, he "died" because Umezawa destroyed a portal to his meditation healm while he was in it, killed Ugin with litle help. Yeah Bolas is a foe that needs to be feared.
The issue with equipment is that its hard to deal with. Unlike crestures which can be killed in combat and auras that fall off them, a powerful equipment is going to be super hard to deal with.
Like if I drop a bomb equipment on something even if you kill my super dude, i just make my other dude super and it keeps going until you pull artifact removal (which is only in three colors)
Also equipment has a very thin region for balance, you get either Op bull***** or worthless jank and the sweet spot is super hsed to find.
Equipment is just a problematic mechanic due to its nature (colorless mostly, buffs that can move across creatures snd dont die if the creature goes) so it makes sense they are pulling back a bit on them.
Maybe if they made better removal for artifacts across all colors (don't say that black doesn't get it... they could easily make some aura for artifacts that drains life and still make it a part of the color pie) or more versatile removal, then they could make better equipment again.
Maybe if they made better removal for artifacts across all colors (don't say that black doesn't get it... they could easily make some aura for artifacts that drains life and still make it a part of the color pie) or more versatile removal, then they could make better equipment again.
To be frank, I agree with JimHarbor on equipment being hard to balance as they currently are constructed and I'm mostly just pointing out the niche cases where the situation did work, such as with Elspeth's sword. While Vehicles probably weren't quite the right answer, a good revision to equipment is needed to make that card type function and to give enough control to actually balance them. Also, whatever gets done to balance equipment would have to retroactively impact all equipment that already exists. Personally, I'd make it so that only non-token creatures can equip gear and they have to be a sentient creature type unless the card itself specifies it can be equipped. So vermin, squirrels, thopters, constructs, etc can not equip gear, but humans, elves, dwarves, etc can equip gear. Then just make gear that says they can only be equipped to creature types like horses, rhino, etc, such as barding and what not. Yes, old equipment would largely remain a bit powerful because of the lack of keywords, but it would likely be a better starting point than trying to reinvent something.
Amonket is definitely not going to be the equipment set, though. I think it's going to be the spells set from what I understood previously, so we'll see a lot of classic cards in the lottery tickets most likely. I'm keeping my hopes up for a Damnation reprint as they printed Heroic Intervention, which can basically stop Damnation in it's tracks as a 2 cmc counter.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
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WBC Eldrazi & Taxes CBW
UR Keep on Cantripin' (UR Phoenix) RU
WU Surprise! It's not UW Control! (UW Midrange) UW
BG The Rock, Straight BG
U Mono-Blue Fish U
RBW Mardu Pyromancer BWR
RG Rabble! Rabble! (GR Blood Moon Aggro) GR
Legacy
W Death & Taxes W
Thats how it was at first but they changed it becasue it led to unfun gameplay.
Also how are vehciles failed ifthey are thr most beloved mechanic of thethe block and quite popular as a mechanic overall?
Also why do people say the Gatewatch winning is some kimd of storytellimg flaw whenthe good guys winning is something that happens in the overwhelming majority of stories?
Very few heroic rales end with the bad guys winning. Star Wars, Lotr, Harry Potter, Superman, Batman, Star Trek, The Avengers, The Legend of Zelda, Terminator 1 and 2, hell even Mad Max hsd the bad guy loose.
If crew 3 would just translate to tap 3 creatures it would obvisiously be terrible, but the requirement on the creatures power is stupid, and its a flavour fail (why need strength to drive a vehicle ? Its stupid).
Especially with the 0 power creatures in the set, the mechanic simply fails in that department.
Vehicles in general are obvisiously not a bad idea, its just the mechanics implementation as it is, that could be much better, but they decided to go with the inferior version of the mechanic (in almost any case, you tap 1 creature to crew a vehicle anyway, so all these could just be tap 1 creature, only the super huge vehicles, might need more than 1 creature to drive them, which again makes sence in flavour, for big flagships and the like and the mechanic would just become universally more useful and lose absolutely nothing).
As it is, crew simply doesnt work in sets that have 0 power creatures, which is a completly unnecessary restriction they put on themself for no reason at all other than "thats how as it is".
The most important aspect of a story is that the heroes actually "struggle" and have some weakness. If they make an enemie that is the ABSOLUTE world eating monsters that annihilate entire planets and eat ALL the life , (just let that sink in, on what "level" of enemie we are looking at here!) , and you defeat them in a extremly silly, short battle and nobody dies, nothing happens, they just "win".
Such a cheap win makes all the upcomming opponents look like idiots, as none of them is even comparable in power to an Eldrazi (even Nicol Bolas is "just" a strong planeswalker, but Emrakul was stronger than him in many ways).
Its a permanent damage to fire of your strongest enemie and make it look like a "joke".
Ofcourse, theres no problem with heroes winning, if they suffer enough, and it has a meaning.
The Eldrazi suffered a total defeat, all 3 of them are beat, thats ridiculous silly, as these kinds of opponents should never be beaten in the first place (imprisoned ok, but "beaten" is just stupid).
Its like you have your hero "beat" a nuclear bomb and just stop the explosion by force of will ; thats how silly it is, and it makes the story look stupid, if your solution to such HUGE problems is just "snap your finger, problem solved".
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If the Eldrazi would simply have destroyed Zendikar, it would have a meaning, it would "matter".
Planeswalker can just leave the plane, rescue some people in some way or another, but them beating the Eldrazi in direct combat, it was so completly silly, i cannot even put it in words ...
----
To compare it, the struggle in the Invasion block against the invading Phyrexian Forces took several blocks as a build up story. You "really" cared for the heroes and they couldnt just beat the opponent, it was a long struggle and required a lot of planning, luck and involved several powerful (old) planeswalkers in epic LONG battles to just avoid the invasion and blow the phyrexians up (and they still where not fully beaten, and it had a REAL damage, Urza was killed, a lot of characters died, and it made the story matter deeply).
As they do it now, you have a 2 set block, 1 is kind of a setup, then something happens and chaos breaks out and just after that the problem is solved and its over.
These stories have NO MEANING at all, they are so short, theres no struggle, there nothing, its just silly and the "solutions" are so terrible idiotic, that its ridiculous that the Gatewatch isnt dead already.
They wasted the story so much, its not even funny ... (they just fail to make the enemie matter, the focus on the gatewatch is such a deep mistake, as anything that happens now looks just stupid, as you always have to question why they could beat something like an Eldrazi so easily, which should never be possible at all!)
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Given the history, it would be a perfect device to get the Phyrexians to Ravnica.
Just like in the past Planar Portal were used to invade Dominaria.
Tezzeret was on Mirrodin as Bolas Agent, so it would be the easiest solution (and its kinda so easy, that its probably true, to make a "return to phyrexia" set viable in some time in the future).
All the planeswalkers dont care for the Planar Bridge (as they can planeswalk anyway, theres no use for them), but its a huge thing for the Phyrexian, which otherwise cannot planeswalk and they are a force that can beat planeswalkers up (even could stand up against the old walkers, so good luck fighting a entire world of them that will infect countless other worlds before you can even react).
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Bolas might find a way to control the Phyrexian , or just unleash them on whatever plane he doesnt like (Ravnica and the Infinite Consortium are kind of a pain for Nicol Bolas, so unleash Phyrexia on them).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
And pulling a quote here:
Development played with Vehicles for many weeks and started to see a problem. The reliance on having a certain number of creatures heavily rewarded you for having a lot of small creatures, especially tokens (this ties into the last mechanic, fabricate, which I will get to in a bit). Because the Vehicles worked so efficiently with tokens, development had to cost the Vehicles assuming you had tokens, and then they ended up being too expensive to work with anything but a token strategy.
Meanwhile, I was busy designing Ham, the fall (northern hemisphere) set of 2017. At the halfway point of Kaladesh design, I handed the reins of the set over to Shawn Main so I could start working on the design for Amonkhet, the large set of the next block. And then halfway through Amonkhet design, I handed the reins over to Ethan Fleischer so I could work on Ham. In Ham, we were working on a new mechanic that I was worried felt too much like Vehicles because it required having a certain number of creatures to activate it. To try and distance my mechanic from Vehicles, I changed it so instead of caring about how many creatures you had, it cared about the total power of the creatures you had. We tested with it and I really liked how it played.
From time to time I poke my head back into sets that I had previously handed off. Kaladesh was in development, so I talked with Ian Duke and Erik Lauer, the co-leads for Kaladesh development. They explained that they were having a problem with Vehicles. As they walked through their problem, it dawned on me that my solution for the Ham mechanic might actually work in Kaladesh. Instead of "crew 5" meaning you have to tap five creatures, it would mean you have to tap any number of creatures whose power added up to 5 or more.
The developers thought the idea was interesting and tried it out. It turned out to be a wonderful solution, because a high crew number no longer meant you had to have a deck with a whole bunch of tokens. Now, you could just play a deck with bigger creatures and not have any tokens
If crewing us based on creature number and not power it means its only viable in a deck you spam full of creatures, preferably ones with a cheap go wide style, making them based on power means they become viable in more types of decks than just go wide ones.
Any deck can get 3 power on the board, getting 3 creatures is a more narrow thing.
And making it poeer based means it has a "mix and match " element that fits KLDs invention theme. You can go wide, tall or any mix of the two to turn vehciles on. Pump spells and counters now work, and also you dont have to cost every Dragon Fodder type effect like it could turn into a 3 turn clock with one colorless.
Thats clearly only the case if we just stupidly take crew 3 and make it a choice between either 3 power or 3 creatures.
But lets face it, all the vehicles that are reasonable have crew 1 (or crew 2 at least, which is pretty much the power any creature that isnt a token will provide, at least in limited).
Crew 3 is allready such a high cost, you simply dont have a creature with power 3 all the time, its in no way easier to archive than having 2 creatures, and a 3 power creature has an inherent value , the biggest selling point of vehicles is to make even the crappiest tokens ready to fight.
The vehicles with very high crew cost are complety trash, even in Limited they play incredible bad (ever used the crew 4+ vehicles ? They stink a lot, downright terrible in Limited and completly trash in constructed).
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Almost any vehicle should have crew 1 and it would play completly fine, having even 1 creature and need to tap it every turn is a "real" cost. Something special like a flagship can need more, but that should be a real exception (as face it, theres not many vehicles in real life that would require more than 1 person to work it, thats only the case for extremly huge ships and the like).
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I know and i can see there points, but in the end, vehicles would be much more universally usefull if they just stick to crew 1 and keep it at that (in almost any case it would play the same, you still want to tap 2 small creatures instead of one with high power and theres almost nothing in Kaladesh that has more than 3 power and isnt a high end big creature itself, and big creatures shouldnt drive in vehicles that are even smaller then they are , its a flavour fail to have a giant dragon in a tiny vehicle, funny, but still stupid).
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Its a poor men excuse. Ofcourse they will badly sell vehicles as thematic, and they are, i am totally on board that vehicles are a great thing for a inventors theme, but "crew" as a mechanic as they did it, using "power" is just inferior as it restricts way too much (theres simply not that many big creatures you want to play to begin with, as vehicles ARE the big creatures that should support smaller creatures instead of big ones).
Anyway, in the end you can tap multiple creatures to "still" crew, but even Kaladesh features 0 power creatures, and its terrible to have them with a mechanic that completly doesnt work with them at all (and thats a fail).
So if you ask me, all vehicles with crew 1 , play exactly like i would invision it, and guess what, they are the very best of the vehicles (surprise surprise) as they work with any deck that has creatures at all.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Well the abundance of artifact hate certainly doesnt help to make any playable in modern (theres affinity, and anything that doesnt fit in affinity will struggle against the same hate).
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Kolaghan's Command did almost single handily made all the artifacts unplayable trash , as they suddenly packed main-deck hate and just "cantrip" killed your artifact while doing whatever else they wanted to do with the spell in the first place.
Abrupt Decay also is a catch-all for the good artifacts that cost 3 or less, which is almost any equipment.
And Stoneforge Mystic being banned, certainly doesnt help to make any more expensive equipment playable.
So yes, Modern is pretty much the most hostile environment for artifacts there is.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
I was actually thinking of frontier, but yeah they got Kolaghan's Command in the format which is always a good play when it comes down (at least that is how it felt playing against it).
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
You do have a point, vehicles do seem like a different take on equipment, I was just realizing we hadn't had a decent piece of equipment since SoM block/Runechanter's Pike. Personally I would have liked "mounts" where a creature could equipped to another creature, almost like Bestow, with the usual creature being equipped can't attack. Past that Crew definitely suffers from anything 3 or higher is practically unusable, thanks to a creature that has power 3 or greater might just be better than the vehicle itself. Vehicles that can do something outside of a being a creature definitely have a better shot at being played.
On a side note There really should have been a Crew 0 vehicle, like a bicycle. Really simple vehicles like that.
Flavourwise people assume at first that the driver is actually "in" the vehicle and destroying the vehicle would also kill the driver, which would make sence (all that "banding" stuff).
However, here, the driver just turns the vehicle on, and doesnt drive it at all.
Which means it makes sence for some high-tech tanks and the like, but if you want something that actually is transporting the driver, you would have Equipment (a bike that accelerates the creature would best be implemented as a Equipment that gives haste and such and that could be very cheap and all creatures could use it, regardless of power).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Well, if they go that route than it feels almost like they are trying a Zendikar 2.0 in that they have a plane that houses some kind of ancient power / evil, a force that seeks to foolishly try to use the power, and then mistakenly unleashes the apocalypse and nearly destroys an entire plane of existence doing so. Which, actually sort of makes sense for an egyptian set considering everyone probably remembers movies like The Mummy, where Imohtep is a vengeful all powerful undead abomination seeking to restore himself to life and take vengeance on the ancestors of the pharaoh that spited him.
Nicol Bolas is powerful, but he isn't going to be able to stop something like Imhotep. That's a being that literally can bring about biblical level natural disasters, like turn the river red, rain frogs, conjure massive unyielding sandstorms, summon swarms of flesh eating Locusts, command an army of undead servants, and can basically steal the life of other beings by touch. Basically, smash an OP liliana together with Vengeful Pharaoh and Ugin, the spirit dragon. That's about him in card form.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I disagree. I think Nicol Bolas is likely more powerful than a God only based on how Theros gods were bound to their plane. Knowing this I feel like Nicol Bolas has a huge advantage considering he's lived on multiple planes and can even rend a plane of its mana entirely.
Dunes of Zairo
SHANDALAR
Innistrad - The Darkest Night
~THE RAVNICAN CONSORTIUM~
A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
They can make it go either way, but walkers aren't by their nature more powerful than native gods and beings, they primarily have the advantage of being able to run away from said native gods and beings and potentially bring tools from other worlds that can deal with those beings. Also, I doubt Nicol Bolas is one to throw down for a battle to the death with anything remotely powerful enough to actually give him trouble, even if he can win if he really put his full might against said being.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The problem with Equipment cards is they can easily turn each of your opponent's creatures into basically the same threat. Swords meant you had to deal with protection over and over again. An Equipment card that is very strong against your deck will be almost impossible to beat because of how same-y it makes all of the creatures. Beyond that, the knobs we have on Equipment aren't great because of how unevenly they scale, especially in Limited. Leonin Scimitar is fine, Vulshok Morningstar is hard to beat, and Vulshok Battlegear can easily dominate games in most formats.
While we have no plans to stop making Equipment, we don't make the cards as strong as we make many of our other cards because of how hard Equipment is to interact with. Having to kill every single creature your opponent plays to turn Equipment off is difficult for certain colors or decks.
Vehicles go very much in the opposite direction. We have a ton of knobs with them because of their crew numbers, and we can put a ton of different kinds of abilities on them. Most importantly, your opponent can interact with them once they have been crewed. That means a wide variety of decks can interact with them. It only takes one removal spell at the right time to deal with them, rather than forcing you to kill every creature that becomes equipped.
Even if that is the case that equipment is hard to deal with for certain forms of decks, making equipment intentionally weak to the point that they have been in the last few sets has made them rather easy to ignore outside of extreme synergy. Theros had Godsend, and that felt like the right direction to go with balancing really strong equipment, as the main problem equipment has is that if it is strong and has no color identity it can go in any deck. On top of that, if the card isn't legendary, than it can be had in multiples on the field at any one time. Sword of Fire and Ice, if it was legendary and also costed UR would likely have been fine because the restriction makes it much harder to simply insert. As far as other decks having to deal with a card on that level and not having an answer, I think that's perfectly fine. There has to be win conditions in a game like Magic the Gathering and a powerful, color specific legendary sword really isn't much worse than Sphinx of the Final Word if costed correctly. Not going to argue that having an equip cost of 3 on the original mirrodin swords probably would have been a good idea.
Ultimately though, the important facet to magic that needs to stay alive is the ability for a player to tell a story with their deck and remain competitive. That is something that I don't feel is happening with how the cards are being designed now and stories being hardlined into the card naming and flavor text. If a spell is chandra's, that limits the ability for someone to create a story of their own. I've got a five swords adventure deck built that uses all the legendary swords from Mirrodin, SFM, and Puresteel Paladin. I'd never be able to build something like this with how card sets are being designed now because the story is too engrained.
Well, I probably did enough spilling of the soul on this subject for the next week.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
For the question: Is Bolas more powerfull than a god? I would say Yes. Kruphix said prety loud that he had couserns with the threats that Elspeth and Ajani where possibly facing, and one of the things was clearly Bolas. Like he never really lost a batle against other being, Ajani? Yeah, he got a chalenge against a Avatar mirroring hinself, he "died" because Umezawa destroyed a portal to his meditation healm while he was in it, killed Ugin with litle help. Yeah Bolas is a foe that needs to be feared.
Like if I drop a bomb equipment on something even if you kill my super dude, i just make my other dude super and it keeps going until you pull artifact removal (which is only in three colors)
Also equipment has a very thin region for balance, you get either Op bull***** or worthless jank and the sweet spot is super hsed to find.
Equipment is just a problematic mechanic due to its nature (colorless mostly, buffs that can move across creatures snd dont die if the creature goes) so it makes sense they are pulling back a bit on them.
Dunes of Zairo
SHANDALAR
Innistrad - The Darkest Night
~THE RAVNICAN CONSORTIUM~
A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
To be frank, I agree with JimHarbor on equipment being hard to balance as they currently are constructed and I'm mostly just pointing out the niche cases where the situation did work, such as with Elspeth's sword. While Vehicles probably weren't quite the right answer, a good revision to equipment is needed to make that card type function and to give enough control to actually balance them. Also, whatever gets done to balance equipment would have to retroactively impact all equipment that already exists. Personally, I'd make it so that only non-token creatures can equip gear and they have to be a sentient creature type unless the card itself specifies it can be equipped. So vermin, squirrels, thopters, constructs, etc can not equip gear, but humans, elves, dwarves, etc can equip gear. Then just make gear that says they can only be equipped to creature types like horses, rhino, etc, such as barding and what not. Yes, old equipment would largely remain a bit powerful because of the lack of keywords, but it would likely be a better starting point than trying to reinvent something.
Amonket is definitely not going to be the equipment set, though. I think it's going to be the spells set from what I understood previously, so we'll see a lot of classic cards in the lottery tickets most likely. I'm keeping my hopes up for a Damnation reprint as they printed Heroic Intervention, which can basically stop Damnation in it's tracks as a 2 cmc counter.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!