Magic faces some serious competition from the field of electronic entertainment. They're just lucky the average Magic player is so lost within his little power fantasy that he fails to realize just how much he's paying to play with what's basically little pieces of cardboard with cool art.
Gotta chime in on the videogame vs magic cards debate. First, yes Magic is way more expensive, especially if you are trying to be competitive. Second, Magic retains a lot more of that value over time. If you invest in a Lotus to play vintage, odds are your lotus will be worth more in 5 years than what you paid for it. Few videogames and videogame systems can say the same (of course, not many magic cards can claim that too). Magic has so much interconnectivity with itself it's crazy. While I love diablo 2 and got a LOT of value out of what I paid for it, I can't use those characters or items in another game. Cards in Magic can be used in various formats or to trade for newer cards, they also have an appeal in that they are very artistic and collectible.
So, $360 for a PS3 slim and 1 game (in a time when most games can be beat in ~20 hours due to low attention spans) or 3 boxes of Magic and a fatpack (or whatever combination of spending you wish to indulge in). I'd go for the Magic almost every time.
Back on topic, I'm a little disheartened that they chose to use the Mythic rarity this way. Previously there were very few true 4-ofs at MR (notably Baneslayer Angel in M10). Now it seems like every set will have 1-2. However this does make opening packs more exciting. Each one is a chance to get that big money card which you can then treasure forever or trade for a ton of stuff you can use.
The trick here is to realize what some people have already said: you don't need certain cards to play Magic. You can play people that have those cards and win. While hardcore Spikes will try and convince you otherwise, the majority of your games will be played against non-pro people who won't play their netdecks as well as the people that designed them and you have many avenues beyond spending money on raw powah to beat them, including but not limited to: mind games, making good metagame decisions, making good sideboarding/mulligan decisions, making better plays and capitalizing on their poor ones.
The game is not all luck, nor is it completely dependent on how much your deck costs (witness some of the BoaB decks from wizards.com that were very cheap and then became popular and more expensive - they were competitive and good deck choices before the cards were 'worth' more).
Quote from clan_iraq »
Rarity level = NOT FINE. Its like printing lightning bolt at mythic
Could you be more dramatic? It is hardly the utility of a card like bolt, off the top of my head the green decks that won't bother with lotus cobra include: elf decks, green/X control decks, and mono-green decks. Whereas you play bolt in pretty much any red deck.
Honest to god, you can work at probably 80% of the efficiency of this with just Birds of Paradise. And if you're needing redundancy you can add in Noble Hierarch.
On a regular turn, it will give you +1 mana. On a turn where you play a fetchland or land + a ramp spell, it will give you +2 mana. On turns where you don't play a land, it will give you 0 mana.
Birds will tap for +1 mana every time. It's consistent, costs less, but is less explosive. It's accessible in real world costs, so the format is approachable.
There's NOTHING that says someone who plays ramp has to use this to be competitive. It might give an extra edge, but it isn't going to invalidate every other similar deck NOR is it going to shift the metagame into a metagame full of ramp decks. This is a fun card, but it won't have people splashing green who weren't using green for something else anyway.
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A voice for Timmy.
Commander R Ashling, the Pilgrim Mono Red Wildfire Control GBW Karador, Ghost Chieftain Abzan Dredge Rock WBR Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Mardu Aggro-Reanimator Midrange
this card is NOT good in a bloodbraid elf deck. The card does not have haste, the card does not have enough power and toughness to justify running in such a deck, and the card stops cascade prematurely. This card will NOT be seen in Bloodbraid.dec
Something tells me I want to play this in a Warp World deck with something like Ant Queen. After a WW resolves and this hits the table you are likely to be able to toss out 7-12 mana easy. I'm sure I can find a way to break this in a WW deck.
level up is absolute garbage. yes somebody feel free to quote me on this in their sig. NONE OF THE LEVEL UP CARDS SHOWN TODAY WILL SEE COMPETITIVE PLAY OUTSIDE OF LIKE ROE ONLY CONSTRUCTED OR SOME GARBAGE.
you know has anyone stopped to think oh hey....if baneslayer was just a rare it would cost less....guess what it wouldn't. and if you think it would go look at Garruk after he first came out or bitterblossom or thoughtseize all very expensive all just rares.
you know has anyone stopped to think oh hey....if baneslayer was just a rare it would cost less....guess what it wouldn't. and if you think it would go look at Garruk after he first came out or bitterblossom or thoughtseize all very expensive all just rares.
no, if baneslayer was just a rare, it would cost less.
It wouldn't cost proportionally less, but it would cost less.
Lightning bolt doesn't set you back $20 a pop. Why? You're going to need more of these than baneslayers, more demand. More supply.
Which was a judge promo last I checked, and thus had a very low supply available, and for the longest time (a decade at least) it was the only foil lightning bolt available on the market.
Supply and Demand still are what they are. Which goes a long way to show why the reprinted 10th rares in m10 were all cut to 1/2 or 1/3 of their pre-m10, 10th edition values. Heck all of the lorwyn planeswalkers are under $10 now.
The cobra can get you a 5 drop on t3, imagine what you could do with plow under on t3. With this thing out, each fetchland is now officially a Black Lotus.
You can do that with a lot of other things, too...Not exactly new territory, here.
Honest to god, you can work at probably 80% of the efficiency of this with just Birds of Paradise. And if you're needing redundancy you can add in Noble Hierarch.
On a regular turn, it will give you +1 mana. On a turn where you play a fetchland or land + a ramp spell, it will give you +2 mana. On turns where you don't play a land, it will give you 0 mana.
Birds will tap for +1 mana every time. It's consistent, costs less, but is less explosive. It's accessible in real world costs, so the format is approachable.
There's NOTHING that says someone who plays ramp has to use this to be competitive. It might give an extra edge, but it isn't going to invalidate every other similar deck NOR is it going to shift the metagame into a metagame full of ramp decks. This is a fun card, but it won't have people splashing green who weren't using green for something else anyway.
Playset Baneslayer costs about E100.-, Lotus will likely be in the same price range. You know what, I'm going to play 2HG with my friends and forget about tournaments (unless they'd allow for proxies )
Playset of this once everyone realizes it's value: $20, tops.
this card gives you more mana overall than birds of paradise and attacks for 2. i wouldn't compare the 2 cards.
It actually gives you less than Birds, as you need a land to trigger it. Sometimes, that can mean 4 mana a turn. Most of the time, it's none. Unless, of course, you pack your deck so full of mana that you draw nothing else... but then you're playing control, and don't need accel.
Yep I agree completely I will sell these the second I get them period. In some random dream hands this card can be ridiculous but every deck has random hands that = GG.
The only time this thing gets dumb is when it generates 3+ mana in one turn and in that circumstance you need to have something to do with that mana that effects the game state. 2 mana off it is nice and is definitely a possibility but it does cost 2 so its not like it takes over birds of paradise's role in magic as a 1/1 for G this would truly be stupidly good.
They tested the hell out of this card period if you think it will warp the meta your jumping to conclusions rather quickly.
IMO she has hit her peak. Baneslayer is expensive now because of the shortage of product. Once everything stabilizes, her prices will go down.
Allready started, it topped out at $30 on ebay and has since started to drop, its probably $28 or so on average now. But thats the first weekly decline the card has had since the set was released, so I expect it to hit $20-$25 before too long.
It's really, really good. Turn 3 and 4 Ultimatums are possible. I've played about 12 games so far, have cast Violent Ultimatum on Turn 4 twice (had a land in hand been a fetch, it would have been Turn 3 one game), cast Broodmate Dragon Turn 3 once, and one game by Turn 5 the board position was:
Cobra, Bloodbraid Elf, Broodmate Dragon, Token, 5 Lands, 2 cards in hand, 20 Life
My opponent started his 4th Turn with:
3 Lands, 2 Cards in hand, 4 Life
Harrow is now free and generates +1 mana. So, yea, staple green mythic...
Yep I agree completely I will sell these the second I get them period. In some random dream hands this card can be ridiculous but every deck has random hands that = GG.
The only time this thing gets dumb is when it generates 3+ mana in one turn
Heres the dream hand for it:
any combination of birds, fetchlands, and cobras.
pretty much any amount of each.
using that "impossible combo" (birds can be subbed for nobles/elves/etc, a fetch or two for forests), you can now ramp up that 'insane 7 mana t3' play. Now I'm not going to call this broken. Thats pretty standard compared to what we've seen in ramp. At issue is that it is so unbelievably reliable that its going to be a staple. See, problem isn't that this card is broken (its fine), its that its a staple mythic.
I think this card is solid but not format-defining, and I highly doubt it will be anywhere near Baneslayer's price once people actually start playing with it. It is definitely pushing it as far as something that could really be considered "mythic."
At best, this is a "staple mythic" with an easy budget alternative. Baneslayer Angel is not.
You can fairly easily substitute a Birds of Paradise or Noble Hierarch for a Lotus Cobra.
You cannot easily substitute a Serra Angel for a Baneslayer Angel.
When people realize that this isn't a make-or-break card for the archetype (a ramp deck's viability is dependent on many other factors than this), then the price will begin to decline. It will still maintain a high price because of the "Lotus" relation, and will certainly be a historically significant card.
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A voice for Timmy.
Commander R Ashling, the Pilgrim Mono Red Wildfire Control GBW Karador, Ghost Chieftain Abzan Dredge Rock WBR Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Mardu Aggro-Reanimator Midrange
Normally these threads are filled with people who can't wait to complain, why in this instance, where complaining is actually justified, are people clamoring to defend tournament-staple level mythic rares?
When I saw Warren instigator, I let it slide because I figured it wouldn't really dent standard a whole ton with LOR/SHA rotating. When I saw the enemy fetchlands, I acknowledged to myself that it was a cash grab (which it was/is, I will get to this in a moment) and would absolutely re-ruin extended, but I did believe that their impact on standard would be negligable without shocklands to nab with them, even with landfall.
This mythic, however, confirms my fear that mythic rares are the proverbial 4th American idol judge. They shoehorn it in, causing players to feel uneasy but eventually understanding since they (for the most part) kept their promise about excluding tournament staples from mythic rarity and making them huge, elaborate spells. Now that we're used to the idea of a 4th rarity, they completely drop the pretense of "not the highest power tournament-level cards" because we're used to mythics being what they promised and if lotus cobra does become some neo-goyf tournament staple card in every format, we will believe them when they claim it was a "mistake" to print it and they will have succeeded in driving up the secondary market but leading players to believe that they didn't do it intentionally.
Here's where I'm sure the defenders begin to scowl and exclaim "But terrible player, Wizards makes not a cent on the secondary market! They have no motive to drive it up." which is half-true. While wizards might not benefit directly if I buy some 20 dollar rares from the lady with the scary arms at the prerelease, they do benefit from the key byproduct of a particularly harsh secondary market--the appeal of cracking packs, spinning the wheel, looking for cards that not only justify my pack purchase, but actually made me money (whether real or imaginary trade-value money) by opening a booster pack. If you could buy a playset of every rare you wanted for cheap, what's the incentive the crack packs looking for it? If a mythic in the newest set is worth 50 dollars, wouldn't that then justify you opening 49 dollars worth of packs if you manage to open one?
I remember Kami-Rav standard and just buying packs because everyone needed shocklands and nobody could trade them away, because everybody knew that they would need them for at least another 2 years. I thought that was by accident, too.
It's really, really good. Turn 3 and 4 Ultimatums are possible. I've played about 12 games so far, have cast Violent Ultimatum on Turn 4 twice (had a land in hand been a fetch, it would have been Turn 3 one game), cast Broodmate Dragon Turn 3 once, and one game by Turn 5 the board position was:
Cobra, Bloodbraid Elf, Broodmate Dragon, Token, 5 Lands, 2 cards in hand, 20 Life
My opponent started his 4th Turn with:
3 Lands, 2 Cards in hand, 4 Life
Harrow is now free and generates +1 mana. So, yea, staple green mythic...
Turn 3 Ultimatums were already possible, without using 6 specific cards, either. An unreliable combo (ish) mana accel? Most people seem to stick with the basics...
At best, this is a "staple mythic" with an easy budget alternative. Baneslayer Angel is not.
You can fairly easily substitute a Birds of Paradise or Noble Hierarch for a Lotus Cobra.
You cannot easily substitute a Serra Angel for a Baneslayer Angel.
When people realize that this isn't a make-or-break card for the archetype (a ramp deck's viability is dependent on many other factors than this), then the price will begin to decline. It will still maintain a high price because of the "Lotus" relation, and will certainly be a historically significant card.
That's probably the first time I've ever heard Birds referred to as 'budget.'
That's probably the first time I've ever heard Birds referred to as 'budget.'
It may seem weird, but they've actually dropped in price dramatically since they were printed in M10. The supply is so much up, you see.
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A voice for Timmy.
Commander R Ashling, the Pilgrim Mono Red Wildfire Control GBW Karador, Ghost Chieftain Abzan Dredge Rock WBR Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Mardu Aggro-Reanimator Midrange
The more I think about the couple of really good mythics in this set makes me happy. I was really getting sick of opening a mythic that was worthless. Opening a Mythic in a pack should be somewhat special to a player and now they are.
None of the Mythics outside of maybe the Blue trap(only in Legacy) are utility cards. The Cobra will NOT be played in every green deck out there. If you think you have to have 4 of these if you make a green deck really need to rethink the way you make your decks. Right now this card is not broke at all in standard. You dump your hand to cast some fatty and your opponent thanks you when he Paths, Doomblades, DoJ's Ect.. your dude. Speaking of dudes how hard is he going to be to deal with. Almost every deck out there can deal with this guy on turn 2. Like someone said before if you cant deal with a non shrouded 2/1 guy you should not bother showing up for a tournie.
Tell me, why wouldn't you play 4 of these in any green deck. What possible better cards are there for a 2 slot? You get a 2/1 body, on top of all that free ramping, and it doesn't even have to tap. You're afraid of Doom blades? You use that huge mana for something other than a creature, or a regenerating one, or a shrouder.
If your opponent "deals with" this 2/1 for 2 using their doom blade, then congratulations. They have used their big bad doom blade for a 1 for 1, and thats their very best. When you cast a Vampire Lacerator on T1, is your opponent going to automatically burn a lightning bolt on it? Maybe not. But this guy its a requirement.
If it wasn't a 2/1 body, or it needed to tap, or any of those factors, then no, it wouldn't be a staple. But this is very much like dark confidant, and yes, it will be a 4-of in every single green deck, period. The only time you wouldn't use it is if you can't use fetchlands for some arbitrary reason.
So, $360 for a PS3 slim and 1 game (in a time when most games can be beat in ~20 hours due to low attention spans) or 3 boxes of Magic and a fatpack (or whatever combination of spending you wish to indulge in). I'd go for the Magic almost every time.
Back on topic, I'm a little disheartened that they chose to use the Mythic rarity this way. Previously there were very few true 4-ofs at MR (notably Baneslayer Angel in M10). Now it seems like every set will have 1-2. However this does make opening packs more exciting. Each one is a chance to get that big money card which you can then treasure forever or trade for a ton of stuff you can use.
The trick here is to realize what some people have already said: you don't need certain cards to play Magic. You can play people that have those cards and win. While hardcore Spikes will try and convince you otherwise, the majority of your games will be played against non-pro people who won't play their netdecks as well as the people that designed them and you have many avenues beyond spending money on raw powah to beat them, including but not limited to: mind games, making good metagame decisions, making good sideboarding/mulligan decisions, making better plays and capitalizing on their poor ones.
The game is not all luck, nor is it completely dependent on how much your deck costs (witness some of the BoaB decks from wizards.com that were very cheap and then became popular and more expensive - they were competitive and good deck choices before the cards were 'worth' more).
Could you be more dramatic? It is hardly the utility of a card like bolt, off the top of my head the green decks that won't bother with lotus cobra include: elf decks, green/X control decks, and mono-green decks. Whereas you play bolt in pretty much any red deck.
Power level = Fine. Its not going to break us any more than lightning bolt did.
Rarity level = NOT FINE. Its like printing lightning bolt at mythic
On a regular turn, it will give you +1 mana. On a turn where you play a fetchland or land + a ramp spell, it will give you +2 mana. On turns where you don't play a land, it will give you 0 mana.
Birds will tap for +1 mana every time. It's consistent, costs less, but is less explosive. It's accessible in real world costs, so the format is approachable.
There's NOTHING that says someone who plays ramp has to use this to be competitive. It might give an extra edge, but it isn't going to invalidate every other similar deck NOR is it going to shift the metagame into a metagame full of ramp decks. This is a fun card, but it won't have people splashing green who weren't using green for something else anyway.
Commander
R Ashling, the Pilgrim Mono Red Wildfire Control
GBW Karador, Ghost Chieftain Abzan Dredge Rock
WBR Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Mardu Aggro-Reanimator Midrange
and it doubles other land ramps.
Yes thats at least as good as birds of paradise. And if birds was a mythic rare, I'd call that a problem, too.
not everything can be boggart ram-gang. i won't be surprised if the cobra does see play alongside bloodbraid elf.
this card gives you more mana overall than birds of paradise and attacks for 2. i wouldn't compare the 2 cards.
BUWRG--->> Here to view my stuff <<---GRWUB
no its not.
currently playing:
LEGACY
loam/depthsBG
Sneak showUR
LED DredgeUBR
ReanimatorUB
landsBURG
EDH
DoranWBG
JhoiraUR
no, if baneslayer was just a rare, it would cost less.
It wouldn't cost proportionally less, but it would cost less.
Lightning bolt doesn't set you back $20 a pop. Why? You're going to need more of these than baneslayers, more demand. More supply.
Tell that to the Judge Foil Lightning Bolt
Which was a judge promo last I checked, and thus had a very low supply available, and for the longest time (a decade at least) it was the only foil lightning bolt available on the market.
Supply and Demand still are what they are. Which goes a long way to show why the reprinted 10th rares in m10 were all cut to 1/2 or 1/3 of their pre-m10, 10th edition values. Heck all of the lorwyn planeswalkers are under $10 now.
You can do that with a lot of other things, too...Not exactly new territory, here.
Turn 3: Bloodbraid Elf into...ahhh, crap...a useless 2/1
That's why Cascade decks don't run Birds, either...
Finally! Someone wih some sense!
Playset of this once everyone realizes it's value: $20, tops.
It actually gives you less than Birds, as you need a land to trigger it. Sometimes, that can mean 4 mana a turn. Most of the time, it's none. Unless, of course, you pack your deck so full of mana that you draw nothing else... but then you're playing control, and don't need accel.
The only time this thing gets dumb is when it generates 3+ mana in one turn and in that circumstance you need to have something to do with that mana that effects the game state. 2 mana off it is nice and is definitely a possibility but it does cost 2 so its not like it takes over birds of paradise's role in magic as a 1/1 for G this would truly be stupidly good.
They tested the hell out of this card period if you think it will warp the meta your jumping to conclusions rather quickly.
Feel free to bid on my cards here!
My Sales Post!
Allready started, it topped out at $30 on ebay and has since started to drop, its probably $28 or so on average now. But thats the first weekly decline the card has had since the set was released, so I expect it to hit $20-$25 before too long.
Cobra, Bloodbraid Elf, Broodmate Dragon, Token, 5 Lands, 2 cards in hand, 20 Life
My opponent started his 4th Turn with:
3 Lands, 2 Cards in hand, 4 Life
Harrow is now free and generates +1 mana. So, yea, staple green mythic...
Heres the dream hand for it:
any combination of birds, fetchlands, and cobras.
pretty much any amount of each.
using that "impossible combo" (birds can be subbed for nobles/elves/etc, a fetch or two for forests), you can now ramp up that 'insane 7 mana t3' play. Now I'm not going to call this broken. Thats pretty standard compared to what we've seen in ramp. At issue is that it is so unbelievably reliable that its going to be a staple. See, problem isn't that this card is broken (its fine), its that its a staple mythic.
http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1959
You can fairly easily substitute a Birds of Paradise or Noble Hierarch for a Lotus Cobra.
You cannot easily substitute a Serra Angel for a Baneslayer Angel.
When people realize that this isn't a make-or-break card for the archetype (a ramp deck's viability is dependent on many other factors than this), then the price will begin to decline. It will still maintain a high price because of the "Lotus" relation, and will certainly be a historically significant card.
Commander
R Ashling, the Pilgrim Mono Red Wildfire Control
GBW Karador, Ghost Chieftain Abzan Dredge Rock
WBR Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Mardu Aggro-Reanimator Midrange
When I saw Warren instigator, I let it slide because I figured it wouldn't really dent standard a whole ton with LOR/SHA rotating. When I saw the enemy fetchlands, I acknowledged to myself that it was a cash grab (which it was/is, I will get to this in a moment) and would absolutely re-ruin extended, but I did believe that their impact on standard would be negligable without shocklands to nab with them, even with landfall.
This mythic, however, confirms my fear that mythic rares are the proverbial 4th American idol judge. They shoehorn it in, causing players to feel uneasy but eventually understanding since they (for the most part) kept their promise about excluding tournament staples from mythic rarity and making them huge, elaborate spells. Now that we're used to the idea of a 4th rarity, they completely drop the pretense of "not the highest power tournament-level cards" because we're used to mythics being what they promised and if lotus cobra does become some neo-goyf tournament staple card in every format, we will believe them when they claim it was a "mistake" to print it and they will have succeeded in driving up the secondary market but leading players to believe that they didn't do it intentionally.
Here's where I'm sure the defenders begin to scowl and exclaim "But terrible player, Wizards makes not a cent on the secondary market! They have no motive to drive it up." which is half-true. While wizards might not benefit directly if I buy some 20 dollar rares from the lady with the scary arms at the prerelease, they do benefit from the key byproduct of a particularly harsh secondary market--the appeal of cracking packs, spinning the wheel, looking for cards that not only justify my pack purchase, but actually made me money (whether real or imaginary trade-value money) by opening a booster pack. If you could buy a playset of every rare you wanted for cheap, what's the incentive the crack packs looking for it? If a mythic in the newest set is worth 50 dollars, wouldn't that then justify you opening 49 dollars worth of packs if you manage to open one?
I remember Kami-Rav standard and just buying packs because everyone needed shocklands and nobody could trade them away, because everybody knew that they would need them for at least another 2 years. I thought that was by accident, too.
Turn 3 Ultimatums were already possible, without using 6 specific cards, either. An unreliable combo (ish) mana accel? Most people seem to stick with the basics...
That's probably the first time I've ever heard Birds referred to as 'budget.'
It may seem weird, but they've actually dropped in price dramatically since they were printed in M10. The supply is so much up, you see.
Commander
R Ashling, the Pilgrim Mono Red Wildfire Control
GBW Karador, Ghost Chieftain Abzan Dredge Rock
WBR Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Mardu Aggro-Reanimator Midrange
None of the Mythics outside of maybe the Blue trap(only in Legacy) are utility cards. The Cobra will NOT be played in every green deck out there. If you think you have to have 4 of these if you make a green deck really need to rethink the way you make your decks. Right now this card is not broke at all in standard. You dump your hand to cast some fatty and your opponent thanks you when he Paths, Doomblades, DoJ's Ect.. your dude. Speaking of dudes how hard is he going to be to deal with. Almost every deck out there can deal with this guy on turn 2. Like someone said before if you cant deal with a non shrouded 2/1 guy you should not bother showing up for a tournie.
If your opponent "deals with" this 2/1 for 2 using their doom blade, then congratulations. They have used their big bad doom blade for a 1 for 1, and thats their very best. When you cast a Vampire Lacerator on T1, is your opponent going to automatically burn a lightning bolt on it? Maybe not. But this guy its a requirement.
If it wasn't a 2/1 body, or it needed to tap, or any of those factors, then no, it wouldn't be a staple. But this is very much like dark confidant, and yes, it will be a 4-of in every single green deck, period. The only time you wouldn't use it is if you can't use fetchlands for some arbitrary reason.