Every card in every new set completely sucks and is limited fooder at best.
I bet Wizards can print a 1 instant that reads "Split Second. Target player loses the game." and people would still say it's crap because it can be redirected by Willbender.
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I rolled 5 D6's and got 3 fours. They must have changed the odds of getting a 4!
U guys can go ahead and keep thinking swans r bad until it becomes a format defining cards and spawns a couple news decks and you all forget that a 4/3 flyer for 4 is a 5 turn clock for white and blue and is really hard to kill
You are correct, and I will sell you a pre-order playset for $50.
It's not just about whether or not the creature can be killed, but whether or not it can be killed efficiently. Chameleon Colossus is good because only Oblivion Ring and Deathtouch creatures can 1-for-1 it.
CC gets 1 for 1'd by both Crib Swap and Condemn. Yes, they gain an asston of life, but that's one less CC on the table.
no one plays Crib Swap
Untrue, Doran decks have started playing it, as it gets rid of CC.
no one plays Lightning Axe
Not at major events, but I've seen pretty good decks running Lightning Axe and Squee.
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This is a good example of the thinking that leads people to think Swans are good. With another card, sure, they can be good. But what if you only draw the other card (which, like Seismic Assault and Fatal Attraction, is probably unplayable on its own) and not the Swans, or the Swans and not the other card? Instant Lose. Just play a good deck with good cards.
I just realized that I should actually be playing up the Swans so that I can dump them quick when their price is inflated, so I'll be leaving now. They're actually great, format-defining even, so I won't let them go for less than a Tarmagoyf a piece, because they're worth it. Really.
Also, you're playing an aggro deck and you drop a Golgari Thug, it doesn't seem to cut it, with a blue deck you play a Breakthrough with X=1 and you shortly after lose the game, and with a black deck you drop a Bridge from Below turn 3... But it doesn't do anything. WHAT GIVES???
Cards in a game-winning combo are allowed to be subpar on their own if the overall effect of the combined cards is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Swans might be very difficult to abuse simply by nature have having 2 colored mana in the cost that isn't red. (That's more of a drawback than anything else.)
Seismic Assualt is great with Life from the Loam, but Loam can get the player to the mana he needs to easily cast Assault. Dragonstorm's entire point was that in order to cast it you'd be playing acceleration spells anyway, which puts you closer to winning the game. Finally, Dredge cheats mana entirely, only *really* needing at most 2 mana sources on the board, and the entire deck works like clockwork.
It is a *lot* of effort to get a double blue-white colored creature in play with a triple-red enchantment. Especially if one of the pieces that ensures you won't fizzle (Dakmor Salvage) is a black source. (It's just one more aspect that makes the combo harder to pull off). Swans will be a fun card, and it's very abusable, but until we have another free damage source that is related to drawing cards or a more reliable means to support horribly off-color combo pieces in standard (besides Gemstone Mines... Reflecting Pool?) it's going to be a hard deck to build.
Because this + Chain of Plasma in Extended lets you draw your deck?
I read this and thought it was an amazing combo that someone had totally overlooked, then realized that swans prevents the damage, so you never get the chance to hit it with plasma more than once.:-/
Still, swans is probably not a good card outside of a deck made to abuse it. The "it isn't a good card without other cards" is a pretty weak arguement, since that is also true of almost everything in Dredge. I am definitely not saying it is as abusable as dredge, but thats a good example of when cards that suck alone can dominate together.
I read this and thought it was an amazing combo that someone had totally overlooked, then realized that swans prevents the damage, so you never get the chance to hit it with plasma more than once.:-/
It doesn't matter that the damage is prevented. The creature is still "that creature," and its controller still gets the option to discard & copy. Seems to work to me.
It doesn't matter that the damage is prevented. The creature is still "that creature," and its controller still gets the option to discard & copy. Seems to work to me.
Really? Hm...I'll have to ask some judge-type about that one.
Oh, and not to beat a dead horse, but Dredge, while obviously more powerful, had its entire deck die to removal that is splashable in every color, forced nearly every extended deck to have SB hate against it and still went on to win a rather respectable number of major tournaments, so "it dies to removal" isn't enough sometimes.
Plus I would never play Swans until the turn I was ready to combo off, anyway.
Edit: Looks like Chain of Plasma actually does work, since the "deals 3 damage" and the "may discard a card" are seperate.
Sorry but this combo is still horrible. Good luck getting the mana for Seismic Assault and Swans. You'll have fun doing that I'm sure.
Mogg Fanatic is good cause it gets sacked to deal 1 damage. Tarmogoyf is good ccause its an efficient beater for two mana
Swans on the other hand are a key to a really bad combo deck that can't go off before turn 4. And that's on the good draw. And without the swans the deck is nigh pointless.
Go ahead and lay your swans down on turn 4. Faerie decks will counter it and then do the last points of damage on turn 5. Aggro will beat you down before you can go off. Dragonstorm was a good combo deck. This, on the other hand, sucks. Period
And also the reason D-storm was good was because it went off consistently early. And if it didn't it had a Plan B aka play Hellkite. What does this deck do besides play Seismic or Swans? Try and win with a 4/3 flyer. I dare you
Dragonstorm was a combo deck that won the game the turn it went off. It suffered suboptimal cards in the deck to increase consistency in winning the game with the right setup.
By contrast, the strategy of "Swans + Random Burn" isn't a combo. It's synergistic, I suppose, but designing a deck around it is a little silly at this point. It would be a lot more consistent for U/R burn to play more card draw than it would be to hold a hand full of Skreds and Shivan Meteors and Lightning Axes for the potential CA bonanza you'd get if you draw a Swan and it stays on the board.
None of that even gets into the symmetric nature of the card. Turning every blocker or burn spell your opponents have into an Ancestral Recall (remember, opponents play cards too?) isn't a smart strategy. Last I checked, Sibilant Spirit wasn't too good. You might say no one blocks in constructed but I'll gladly throw a blocker in the way of a card that'll net me draws just for not taking damage from it.
This kinda reminds me of the Skred/Stuffy Doll stuff that ultimately went no where. There's a whole host of cards that would generate a tremendous advantage based on their synergy, but ultimately that synergy needs to be redundant (i.e. multiple cards like Swans that convert your burn suite into card advantage) or it needs to outright win the game. Swans does neither.
Perhaps you missed the fact that half the time Reveillark decks win by attacking with Reveillark which is, in fact, a 4/3 flyer?
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Sorry but this combo is still horrible. Good luck getting the mana for Seismic Assault and Swans. You'll have fun doing that I'm sure.
Mogg Fanatic is good cause it gets sacked to deal 1 damage. Tarmogoyf is good ccause its an efficient beater for two mana
Swans on the other hand are a key to a really bad combo deck that can't go off before turn 4. And that's on the good draw. And without the swans the deck is nigh pointless.
Go ahead and lay your swans down on turn 4. Faerie decks will counter it and then do the last points of damage on turn 5. Aggro will beat you down before you can go off. Dragonstorm was a good combo deck. This, on the other hand, sucks. Period
And also the reason D-storm was good was because it went off consistently early. And if it didn't it had a Plan B aka play Hellkite. What does this deck do besides play Seismic or Swans? Try and win with a 4/3 flyer. I dare you
So, you're taking a hardline stance about a deck that doesn't exist yet, proposed for a format that doesn't exist yet? That seems less than optimal.
Saying it is horrible now seems a tad foolish and shortsighted. Some of the other poster's analysis of why this card leads to specific gamestates which may be less than favorable for the card's controller are useful. Random brash claims about the quality or lack of quality of this card, especially given all of the glaring knowledge gaps just doesn't seem all that productive.
Enslaught does raise several good points, though it seemed like a lot of the lists people were starting to propose were either pure combo decks that didn't play the swan until they were ready to "go off", and then still have enough redundancy to "go off" in the face of some sort of removal, or they were some manner of counter-burn deck, which would use the burn it was packing for removal and redunancy in card draw if the opponent wasn't putting much to the board, though it does shift a little bit of value when the builder is evaluating cards, as it would make a player question if it's application to draw more cards (sometimes at a cost more efficent than the blue draw spells) is worth the trade-off of not being able to go to the head. I'd imagine most people wouldn't be just packing a deck full of random burn and the swan, but rather the most efficent type for their particular need/meta.
Yea but they also have I dunno......other creatures? Riftwatcher....Cloudskate...Venser...Body Double.....
This deck is just a BAD combo.
*Edit: I also don't need to see the entire format to know that this deck, in whatever form it may come, is just people trying to make some jank albeit flashy synergy into a Tier 1 deck.
Swans is not BAD, but it sure as heck isn't format defining. It's a 4/3 for FOUR MANA. There's alot of competition at the 4 mana slot in both blue and white. Yes it's an evasive beater, yes it's a resistant one at that, but the fact of the matter is it still isn't THAT powerful. Yes it has combo potential and card draw written all over it (literally), but your opponent can benefit too. I see this card being best in a Red/Blue burn and control deck as a finisher. That way you get to pick and choose how the card is used, while maintaining a threat that hurts every turn while filling up your hand.
Swans is not BAD, but it sure as heck isn't format defining. It's a 4/3 for FOUR MANA. There's alot of competition at the 4 mana slot in both blue and white. Yes it's an evasive beater, yes it's a resistant one at that, but the fact of the matter is it still isn't THAT powerful. Yes it has combo potential and card draw written all over it (literally), but your opponent can benefit too. I see this card being best in a Red/Blue burn and control deck as a finisher. That way you get to pick and choose how the card is used, while maintaining a threat that hurts every turn while filling up your hand.
Reveillark is a 4/3 for five mana. They're both combo enablers and Swans can be played in two different colors.
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Reveillark has an amazing ability attached to it that really doesn't compare to Swans'.
All you have to do is to top deck a Lark and win from the nuts card advantage. However should you top deck a Swans and your opponent sends some damage to it then suddenly you find yourself in a DEEP hole.
Lark or Dragonstorm > Swans
But if someone does bust this card and wins something signifigant(sp?) like a Grand Prix or Regionals then I'll take my words back.
Understand, Dredge is not really a Magic: The Gathering deck. When a card is playable in it, it doesn't mean it's a tournament playable card. It means it's playable in whatever crazy fantasy world that Dredge operates in.
As for Swans, I think it might be good in the seismic assault deck, but not really otherwise. The manabase is pretty terrible in that deck though, and it has trouble beating hate cards (or well-timed nameless inversions) because it doesn't really have a good plan B (Sure, you can beat with swans or chuck lands at things, but you can bet that those plans will be much worse than your opponent's regular game plan). It might be good, but the deck is hard to construct correctly, so I think until people are able to find some sort of balance with a good plan B, it won't be that competitive.
Wait, what? Corrupt can totally target creatures. What version are you looking at?
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For the record I'm on the 'Swans is good' boat, but I gotta say it-
How in four pages have none of the 'Swans is bad' guys not pointed out that it's being released in a set that revolves around -1/-1 counters, an effective way to kill off a creature that avoids direct damage to it?
More to the point, this is just another reason why no one can firmly say it's good nor bad until we've actually seen it played in the environment it is gonna exist in. We don't know what post-Moore standard will be like, all we can do is judge cards based on their potential, and Swans is a card that's loaded with potential.
Will Swans be format defining? Maybe, maybe not. But is it a card we should be excited about based on what we know so far? Abso-freaking-lutely. Anyone prepared to bash this card at this point in time is just looking to stir the proverbial ****, but those trying to defend it need simply point out that the card has the potential to be format breaking, and that should be enough to validate the excitement.
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I bet Wizards can print a 1 instant that reads "Split Second. Target player loses the game." and people would still say it's crap because it can be redirected by Willbender.
2 privileged position out, plus worship, plus swans.... good game. the only way to beat it is wrath/damnation.
as far as I can tell, anyways...
EDIT: there are of course, those pesky "Win the game' or 'target player loses the game cards' but I've got counters.
Friend, artist, magic player, but most of all, Polar Bear God. We'll miss you, buddy
You are correct, and I will sell you a pre-order playset for $50.
It also rocks with Firespout.
CC gets 1 for 1'd by both Crib Swap and Condemn. Yes, they gain an asston of life, but that's one less CC on the table.
Untrue, Doran decks have started playing it, as it gets rid of CC.
Not at major events, but I've seen pretty good decks running Lightning Axe and Squee.
Hey, you. Yes, you reading this sig. Get off your computer, go find a copy of Skies of Arcadia: Legends and play it. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.
Because we all know Rite of Flame and Seething Song are great topdecks and Telling Time was a tier 1 card on its own, along with sleight of hand.
Also, you're playing an aggro deck and you drop a Golgari Thug, it doesn't seem to cut it, with a blue deck you play a Breakthrough with X=1 and you shortly after lose the game, and with a black deck you drop a Bridge from Below turn 3... But it doesn't do anything. WHAT GIVES???
Cards in a game-winning combo are allowed to be subpar on their own if the overall effect of the combined cards is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Swans might be very difficult to abuse simply by nature have having 2 colored mana in the cost that isn't red. (That's more of a drawback than anything else.)
Seismic Assualt is great with Life from the Loam, but Loam can get the player to the mana he needs to easily cast Assault. Dragonstorm's entire point was that in order to cast it you'd be playing acceleration spells anyway, which puts you closer to winning the game. Finally, Dredge cheats mana entirely, only *really* needing at most 2 mana sources on the board, and the entire deck works like clockwork.
It is a *lot* of effort to get a double blue-white colored creature in play with a triple-red enchantment. Especially if one of the pieces that ensures you won't fizzle (Dakmor Salvage) is a black source. (It's just one more aspect that makes the combo harder to pull off). Swans will be a fun card, and it's very abusable, but until we have another free damage source that is related to drawing cards or a more reliable means to support horribly off-color combo pieces in standard (besides Gemstone Mines... Reflecting Pool?) it's going to be a hard deck to build.
I read this and thought it was an amazing combo that someone had totally overlooked, then realized that swans prevents the damage, so you never get the chance to hit it with plasma more than once.:-/
Still, swans is probably not a good card outside of a deck made to abuse it. The "it isn't a good card without other cards" is a pretty weak arguement, since that is also true of almost everything in Dredge. I am definitely not saying it is as abusable as dredge, but thats a good example of when cards that suck alone can dominate together.
Really? Hm...I'll have to ask some judge-type about that one.
Oh, and not to beat a dead horse, but Dredge, while obviously more powerful, had its entire deck die to removal that is splashable in every color, forced nearly every extended deck to have SB hate against it and still went on to win a rather respectable number of major tournaments, so "it dies to removal" isn't enough sometimes.
Plus I would never play Swans until the turn I was ready to combo off, anyway.
Edit: Looks like Chain of Plasma actually does work, since the "deals 3 damage" and the "may discard a card" are seperate.
Mogg Fanatic is good cause it gets sacked to deal 1 damage. Tarmogoyf is good ccause its an efficient beater for two mana
Swans on the other hand are a key to a really bad combo deck that can't go off before turn 4. And that's on the good draw. And without the swans the deck is nigh pointless.
Go ahead and lay your swans down on turn 4. Faerie decks will counter it and then do the last points of damage on turn 5. Aggro will beat you down before you can go off. Dragonstorm was a good combo deck. This, on the other hand, sucks. Period
And also the reason D-storm was good was because it went off consistently early. And if it didn't it had a Plan B aka play Hellkite. What does this deck do besides play Seismic or Swans? Try and win with a 4/3 flyer. I dare you
Dragonstorm was a combo deck that won the game the turn it went off. It suffered suboptimal cards in the deck to increase consistency in winning the game with the right setup.
By contrast, the strategy of "Swans + Random Burn" isn't a combo. It's synergistic, I suppose, but designing a deck around it is a little silly at this point. It would be a lot more consistent for U/R burn to play more card draw than it would be to hold a hand full of Skreds and Shivan Meteors and Lightning Axes for the potential CA bonanza you'd get if you draw a Swan and it stays on the board.
None of that even gets into the symmetric nature of the card. Turning every blocker or burn spell your opponents have into an Ancestral Recall (remember, opponents play cards too?) isn't a smart strategy. Last I checked, Sibilant Spirit wasn't too good. You might say no one blocks in constructed but I'll gladly throw a blocker in the way of a card that'll net me draws just for not taking damage from it.
This kinda reminds me of the Skred/Stuffy Doll stuff that ultimately went no where. There's a whole host of cards that would generate a tremendous advantage based on their synergy, but ultimately that synergy needs to be redundant (i.e. multiple cards like Swans that convert your burn suite into card advantage) or it needs to outright win the game. Swans does neither.
-E
Perhaps you missed the fact that half the time Reveillark decks win by attacking with Reveillark which is, in fact, a 4/3 flyer?
Hey, you. Yes, you reading this sig. Get off your computer, go find a copy of Skies of Arcadia: Legends and play it. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.
So, you're taking a hardline stance about a deck that doesn't exist yet, proposed for a format that doesn't exist yet? That seems less than optimal.
Saying it is horrible now seems a tad foolish and shortsighted. Some of the other poster's analysis of why this card leads to specific gamestates which may be less than favorable for the card's controller are useful. Random brash claims about the quality or lack of quality of this card, especially given all of the glaring knowledge gaps just doesn't seem all that productive.
Enslaught does raise several good points, though it seemed like a lot of the lists people were starting to propose were either pure combo decks that didn't play the swan until they were ready to "go off", and then still have enough redundancy to "go off" in the face of some sort of removal, or they were some manner of counter-burn deck, which would use the burn it was packing for removal and redunancy in card draw if the opponent wasn't putting much to the board, though it does shift a little bit of value when the builder is evaluating cards, as it would make a player question if it's application to draw more cards (sometimes at a cost more efficent than the blue draw spells) is worth the trade-off of not being able to go to the head. I'd imagine most people wouldn't be just packing a deck full of random burn and the swan, but rather the most efficent type for their particular need/meta.
This deck is just a BAD combo.
*Edit: I also don't need to see the entire format to know that this deck, in whatever form it may come, is just people trying to make some jank albeit flashy synergy into a Tier 1 deck.
Without Pariah, no creature dies to Corrupt.
Reveillark is a 4/3 for five mana. They're both combo enablers and Swans can be played in two different colors.
Hey, you. Yes, you reading this sig. Get off your computer, go find a copy of Skies of Arcadia: Legends and play it. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.
All you have to do is to top deck a Lark and win from the nuts card advantage. However should you top deck a Swans and your opponent sends some damage to it then suddenly you find yourself in a DEEP hole.
Lark or Dragonstorm > Swans
But if someone does bust this card and wins something signifigant(sp?) like a Grand Prix or Regionals then I'll take my words back.
Modern:
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Uh, corrupt targets creatures too.
As for Swans, I think it might be good in the seismic assault deck, but not really otherwise. The manabase is pretty terrible in that deck though, and it has trouble beating hate cards (or well-timed nameless inversions) because it doesn't really have a good plan B (Sure, you can beat with swans or chuck lands at things, but you can bet that those plans will be much worse than your opponent's regular game plan). It might be good, but the deck is hard to construct correctly, so I think until people are able to find some sort of balance with a good plan B, it won't be that competitive.
Wait, what? Corrupt can totally target creatures. What version are you looking at?
Hey, you. Yes, you reading this sig. Get off your computer, go find a copy of Skies of Arcadia: Legends and play it. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.
How in four pages have none of the 'Swans is bad' guys not pointed out that it's being released in a set that revolves around -1/-1 counters, an effective way to kill off a creature that avoids direct damage to it?
More to the point, this is just another reason why no one can firmly say it's good nor bad until we've actually seen it played in the environment it is gonna exist in. We don't know what post-Moore standard will be like, all we can do is judge cards based on their potential, and Swans is a card that's loaded with potential.
Will Swans be format defining? Maybe, maybe not. But is it a card we should be excited about based on what we know so far? Abso-freaking-lutely. Anyone prepared to bash this card at this point in time is just looking to stir the proverbial ****, but those trying to defend it need simply point out that the card has the potential to be format breaking, and that should be enough to validate the excitement.
[/two cents]
"The means justify the ends."
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