Technically AFR previews start on the 29th, but we're not allowed to have breaks on the spoiler season, apparently. Today's previews consist of making mono-white players (who don't know how to distribute damage in multiplayer) hate flumphs (who do not deserve any hate whatesoever), and one of Tasha's most iconic spells, now about to wreck Legacy decks or something.
I love how they're pushing mill spells, archetype really need help to be finally competitive. Laughter seems incredible for modern, where average cmc is 1-3.
laughter: what………the?! is that even possible how in the world is this not mythic? Not only it’s even worse than Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger attack trigger It might actually be possible to mill in exile form a whole entire deck if it’s the right deck with it outside commander. Actually you can instantly kill ad nauseam commander deck since all the cards but 3 are lands
laughter: what………the?! is that even possible how in the world is this not mythic? Not only it’s even worse than Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger attack trigger It might actually be possible to mill in exile form a whole entire deck if it’s the right deck with it outside commander. Actually you can instantly kill card]ad nauseam[/card] commander deck since all the cards but 3 are lands
And just for the sake of argument- is there anything wrong with a spell that ruins a degenerate, non-interactive deck? Do you have a problem with rule of law vs storm decks? Leyline of the void vs protean hulk?? Cards that impede strategies that are not fun without being specifically designed as a silver bullet are a good thing. Even cEdh players don't enjoy watching someone playing solitaire - I applaud the arrival of a card that reaches into this territou.
Does Tasha's Hideous Laughter get a better rate on average than 14 cards or Mind Funeral? Say we get to test against Modern UR Prowess, Heliod Ballista, and the doom scenarios Green Tron and Blue Cascade Living End....
While I feel that Tasha's Hideous Laughter may do better in 1v1 formats than Sanity Grinding (depending on format/meta), I feel that it is appropriately costed. While it compares fairly well to fractured sanity or madenning cacophany and notably exiles those cards, this card is single-targeted while the others affect each opponent.
Flumph, though... I get the impression that this card plays MUCH better than it looks in EDH. If each of your opponents attack with a Sakura Tribe Elder or similar creature in the space of a turn, it's very easily granting you +3 cards and everyone else +1, which I feel is the real direction that White "shared card advantage" should go... and the body isn't terrible for the rate either.
And just for the sake of argument- is there anything wrong with a spell that ruins a degenerate, non-interactive deck? Do you have a problem with rule of law vs storm decks? Leyline of the void vs protean hulk?? Cards that impede strategies that are not fun without being specifically designed as a silver bullet are a good thing. Even cEdh players don't enjoy watching someone playing solitaire - I applaud the arrival of a card that reaches into this territou.
Problem is, its an arms race of degenerated stuff and specific counters to them.
Super hard counter stuff to a strategy is pretty boring, if theres little to no room to work with it.
Interaction is king.
The vast majority of combos win quickly, especially "proper" cEDH decks will know their combo and perform it fairly fast, if you want to play a combo metagame you have to know what you are up against and bring proper tools to the table, sitting there like a duck and just watch is a pretty bad approach.
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Anyway, the mechanics of these cards are decent if not simply good.
I just dont like the mixing of D&D terms in such a blatant way (and the mechanic isnt even representing what the spell does in D&D , which is kind of a failure at least flavor wise).
Flavorwise Tasha's Hideous Laughter should for sure tap down creatures for some time, as thats what the spell actually does, not "mill" a player or exile cards from the library even (which is by far the stronger form of mill).
Flavor i give these a 0/5 , its just a failure.
Powerlevel is 4/5 , pretty good cards to have if you want these effects.
Should be cards not in the D&D theme (and the fact they dont use the flavor names like on the godzilla cards is an even bigger issue, with reprinting these cards in the future).
Does Tasha's Hideous Laughter get a better rate on average than 14 cards or Mind Funeral? Say we get to test against Modern UR Prowess, Heliod Ballista, and the doom scenarios Green Tron and Blue Cascade Living End....
Averages 15 against UR prowess, 14 against Heliod, 10 against Tron, 6 against Living End, based on a totally arbitrary selection of decklists and 20/average cmc. Not a perfect assumption since the last card can exceed 20, so if you mill an Ulamog you could totally hit 29, so those are slightly low estimates, but I don't feel like figuring out by how much.
Importantly, it exiles.
Also, I very much hope we get a Bigby's Hand card.
There is no magical christmasland where youre drawing 3 cards per turn cycle off it because your opponents are intentionally swinging into it in edh. Your opponents know you get a card, and they might not.
Its more likely to be ignored until the draws are irrelevant. Sure that acts as a bit of a deterrent but not a major one. Anything aggressive will be able to remove this thing or just smash over it, and anything else will just sit back until their machine is created
Other formats? Idk, that fat ass to cmc ratio is nice but the equal draw power can backfire pretty hard
Its a mediocre rare that a lot of people are going to spend weeks defending and then never play anywhere
Don't see playing Flumph outside of multiplayer, where you come out ahead of opponents on cards, and in 1v1 you'll find drawing your aggressive opponent into more action to be a generally bad strategy
There goes a good portion of Mono Red/Mono White libraries!
Flumpf is a cool name. Feels like the sound someone makes when the shuffler does stupid ***** giving land rather than the spell you need to win lol. As for mill, well, they have to make mill relevant once Throne-Theros-Ikoria-M21 leave standard in a few months. Yay?
'buster
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'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset. Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
The mill card seemed super insane until I really looked into the CMC of most decks. Even in legacy most decks actually have some high cmc cards it's just that they intend to cheat on the man cost for them. I can see it being good, but probably on the level of archive trap.
There is no magical christmasland where youre drawing 3 cards per turn cycle off it because your opponents are intentionally swinging into it in edh. Your opponents know you get a card, and they might not.
Its more likely to be ignored until the draws are irrelevant. Sure that acts as a bit of a deterrent but not a major one. Anything aggressive will be able to remove this thing or just smash over it, and anything else will just sit back until their machine is created
Other formats? Idk, that fat ass to cmc ratio is nice but the equal draw power can backfire pretty hard
Its a mediocre rare that a lot of people are going to spend weeks defending and then never play anywhere
The baseline is a 0/4 flying defender - which is admittedly barely acceptable as a common. The symmetrical card draw is a slight advantage for your opponent in 1v1 in a vacuum - but if you are able to utilize those cards while your opponent cannot (you have magecraft triggers/a curve that could cast cards better than your opponent) it can be a small advantage in 1v1. Also effects like smothering tithe can come into effect to gain an advantage there. In commander - you can potentially use this to give cards to the player that is doing worst - or is agreeing to be the nicest to you - it can be a powerful political tool.
While I feel that Tasha's Hideous Laughter may do better in 1v1 formats than Sanity Grinding (depending on format/meta), I feel that it is appropriately costed. While it compares fairly well to fractured sanity or madenning cacophany and notably exiles those cards, this card is single-targeted while the others affect each opponent.
So... just reread the card and finally realized that it affects each opponent. That is pretty insane.
Tasha’s Hideous Laughter is interesting. It is certainly strong when you consider that against some decks with really low curves or a very high land count you might end up exiling 1/3rd of your opponent’s deck, but I’m not sure what constructed mill decks would want this. Standard rogues doesn’t really want to use this because their cards care about the opponent’s graveyard being full and a big part of what makes Modern Mill decks tick is the card advantage from visions of beyond and disruption in the form of sugical extraction and drown in the loch.
At first glance you’d think this would at least gives Modern Mill a mill spell that doesn’t care about sideboard shuffle-in eldrazi, but even then sidboarding in Emrakul, the aeons torn is still not bad vs Tasha’s Hideous Laughter since Emrakul adds a 15 mana value hit, possibly making this into a 3 mana tome scour that exiles rather than a card that can “mill” more cards than archive trap.
Tasha’s Hideous Laughter is interesting. It is certainly strong when you consider that against some decks with really low curves or a very high land count you might end up exiling 1/3rd of your opponent’s deck, but I’m not sure what constructed mill decks would want this. Standard rogues doesn’t really want to use this because their cards care about the opponent’s graveyard being full and a big part of what makes Modern Mill decks tick is the card advantage from visions of beyond and disruption in the form of sugical extraction and drown in the loch.
At first glance you’d think this would at least gives Modern Mill a mill spell that doesn’t care about sideboard shuffle-in eldrazi, but even then sidboarding in Emrakul, the aeons torn is still not bad vs Tasha’s Hideous Laughter since Emrakul adds a 15 mana value hit, possibly making this into a 3 mana tome scour that exiles rather than a card that can “mill” more cards than archive trap.
This might be good against rogues due to the generally know mana curve (aside from its big draw spell).
I see Pioneer as the format where THL makes its biggest impact.
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STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
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Technically AFR previews start on the 29th, but we're not allowed to have breaks on the spoiler season, apparently. Today's previews consist of making mono-white players (who don't know how to distribute damage in multiplayer) hate flumphs (who do not deserve any hate whatesoever), and one of Tasha's most iconic spells, now about to wreck Legacy decks or something.
Source: DragonTalk Live
laughter: what………the?! is that even possible how in the world is this not mythic? Not only it’s even worse than Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger attack trigger It might actually be possible to mill in exile form a whole entire deck if it’s the right deck with it outside commander. Actually you can instantly kill ad nauseam commander deck since all the cards but 3 are lands
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#BLM
#DefundThePolice
I'll stick around to see design space usage just in case they hit on something I never knew I wanted.
And just for the sake of argument- is there anything wrong with a spell that ruins a degenerate, non-interactive deck? Do you have a problem with rule of law vs storm decks? Leyline of the void vs protean hulk?? Cards that impede strategies that are not fun without being specifically designed as a silver bullet are a good thing. Even cEdh players don't enjoy watching someone playing solitaire - I applaud the arrival of a card that reaches into this territou.
Flumph, though... I get the impression that this card plays MUCH better than it looks in EDH. If each of your opponents attack with a Sakura Tribe Elder or similar creature in the space of a turn, it's very easily granting you +3 cards and everyone else +1, which I feel is the real direction that White "shared card advantage" should go... and the body isn't terrible for the rate either.
Problem is, its an arms race of degenerated stuff and specific counters to them.
Super hard counter stuff to a strategy is pretty boring, if theres little to no room to work with it.
Interaction is king.
The vast majority of combos win quickly, especially "proper" cEDH decks will know their combo and perform it fairly fast, if you want to play a combo metagame you have to know what you are up against and bring proper tools to the table, sitting there like a duck and just watch is a pretty bad approach.
----
Anyway, the mechanics of these cards are decent if not simply good.
I just dont like the mixing of D&D terms in such a blatant way (and the mechanic isnt even representing what the spell does in D&D , which is kind of a failure at least flavor wise).
Flavorwise Tasha's Hideous Laughter should for sure tap down creatures for some time, as thats what the spell actually does, not "mill" a player or exile cards from the library even (which is by far the stronger form of mill).
Flavor i give these a 0/5 , its just a failure.
Powerlevel is 4/5 , pretty good cards to have if you want these effects.
Should be cards not in the D&D theme (and the fact they dont use the flavor names like on the godzilla cards is an even bigger issue, with reprinting these cards in the future).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Averages 15 against UR prowess, 14 against Heliod, 10 against Tron, 6 against Living End, based on a totally arbitrary selection of decklists and 20/average cmc. Not a perfect assumption since the last card can exceed 20, so if you mill an Ulamog you could totally hit 29, so those are slightly low estimates, but I don't feel like figuring out by how much.
Importantly, it exiles.
Also, I very much hope we get a Bigby's Hand card.
There is no magical christmasland where youre drawing 3 cards per turn cycle off it because your opponents are intentionally swinging into it in edh. Your opponents know you get a card, and they might not.
Its more likely to be ignored until the draws are irrelevant. Sure that acts as a bit of a deterrent but not a major one. Anything aggressive will be able to remove this thing or just smash over it, and anything else will just sit back until their machine is created
Other formats? Idk, that fat ass to cmc ratio is nice but the equal draw power can backfire pretty hard
Its a mediocre rare that a lot of people are going to spend weeks defending and then never play anywhere
There goes a good portion of Mono Red/Mono White libraries!
Flumpf is a cool name. Feels like the sound someone makes when the shuffler does stupid ***** giving land rather than the spell you need to win lol. As for mill, well, they have to make mill relevant once Throne-Theros-Ikoria-M21 leave standard in a few months. Yay?
'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
The baseline is a 0/4 flying defender - which is admittedly barely acceptable as a common. The symmetrical card draw is a slight advantage for your opponent in 1v1 in a vacuum - but if you are able to utilize those cards while your opponent cannot (you have magecraft triggers/a curve that could cast cards better than your opponent) it can be a small advantage in 1v1. Also effects like smothering tithe can come into effect to gain an advantage there. In commander - you can potentially use this to give cards to the player that is doing worst - or is agreeing to be the nicest to you - it can be a powerful political tool.
So... just reread the card and finally realized that it affects each opponent. That is pretty insane.
At first glance you’d think this would at least gives Modern Mill a mill spell that doesn’t care about sideboard shuffle-in eldrazi, but even then sidboarding in Emrakul, the aeons torn is still not bad vs Tasha’s Hideous Laughter since Emrakul adds a 15 mana value hit, possibly making this into a 3 mana tome scour that exiles rather than a card that can “mill” more cards than archive trap.
This might be good against rogues due to the generally know mana curve (aside from its big draw spell).
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."