This set feels more... proportionate with its power throughout the rarities. Theros main problem, and I did like it, was that commons and uncommons were on a far more dramatically lower power scale than the rares or mythics within the same block. Yet that is not the same impression I am getting from Khans of Tarkir. There are strong commons and uncommons and there are strong rares and mythics as well.
Easy example of a good common is Hooting Mandrills; a 4/4 Trampler for 6 mana with delve. Yet the mandrills reward the player for having cards in the yard and with just five in the yard you can throw down a 4/4 Trampler for G. Which would have been at least an uncommon in Theros.
I Wondering if Dig through Time could have a place in modern RUG Scapeshift.Since you're sacing stuff (fetches, secura tribe elder) and using bolts+counters (and because you're going to have the mana anyways), this card might become playable.
This is the new homelands, this set has a lot of crap in it. Actually the actual metagame is not going to be affected that much when ravnica rotate, we only have to change 2 or 3 cards with some equivalent of khans and there you go, same decks.
I will say that Fortify still wouldn't work for Abzan, due to the fact that it's Equipment, and therefore Artifacts, and subsequently, is supposed to be for All Decks, not GWB decks only.
I would like to see more asymmetry and fewer cycles. Perhaps with the absence of the core set we will see a bit more design space within each block?
No doubt, it does go without saying that these "this set sucks/I dont like this set/worse set ever" threads come up with EVERY set. But jeeez, these past few sets they've just seemed more and more justified. I've actually even lost a lot of interest in MTG ever since Innistrad rolled out. And I'm someone who's been playing pretty avidly since about 1995. Since Innistrad rolled out and Theros came in, I've never been less interested in MTG in the near 20 years I've been playing. Usually I'll come up with dozens and dozens of crappy new rogue "Johnny" decks with each new set that comes out. Since Innistrad rolled out, I've made 2 different decks in about the passed year and a half.
I understand MTG is trying to pull back the power creep and that's fair enough. But now it feels like they're taking us back to the days of Legends with these overcosted and tri-coloured cards that would still barely be playable even if they cost 1-2 less and and weren't so colour intensive. And what's with all the uncommon cards printed as rares?
This next block after Khans better be like Urza's Saga meets Mirrodin with power 9 reprints after all this crap.
This is the new homelands, this set has a lot of crap in it. Actually the actual metagame is not going to be affected that much when ravnica rotate, we only have to change 2 or 3 cards with some equivalent of khans and there you go, same decks.
I think you're mixing up your ill-conceived comparisons -- you're supposed to be complaining about how weak Theros is, not Return to Ravnica. You're implying that the pre-rotation metagame is dominated by Theros.
In any case, on behalf of all of your Standard opponents for the next 4 months or so, I would like to say that I think your proposal of barely changing your decks at all with a handful of obvious substitutions is a great idea and you should definitely do it.
I will say that Fortify still wouldn't work for Abzan, due to the fact that it's Equipment, and therefore Artifacts, and subsequently, is supposed to be for All Decks, not GWB decks only.
I would like to see more asymmetry and fewer cycles. Perhaps with the absence of the core set we will see a bit more design space within each block?
The problem is that humans are pattern makers. We see the boxes, and we want them filled.
People kept making comments about Planeswalkers of certain two color combos not being present. People kept talking about wedges. People complained when there wasn't a legendary Werewolf in Innistrad block, despite legends for every other tribe. If this, the Wedge set, quite possibly the only Wedge set we'll get for some time, didn't have a mechanic that worked in the WBG deck only, people would be furious. Hell, people were mad when they looked at Naya and didn't see the "mechanic" at all.
Fortifications are Artifacts. By their very nature, they must be playable in all decks, regardless of color choice or mana-base, in almost every scenario. It wouldn't feel right to give a mechanic that worked for every deck and put it into a certain wedge, and say "There Wedge, that's your mechanic, enjoy it." It would be like if Esper got all those Artifact Matters cards, but the artifacts were all colors, as opposed to fitting within the Shard. And I'm noting Esper because it serves as another point. If the WGB wedge became Fortifications, and they had to make it unique and therefore made colored artifacts, it might start treading on Esper's toes in the eyes of the public.
This is the new homelands, this set has a lot of crap in it. Actually the actual metagame is not going to be affected that much when ravnica rotate, we only have to change 2 or 3 cards with some equivalent of khans and there you go, same decks.
Have you actually played with Homelands?
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100% Vorthos Spike and Storyline Expert
Former Fact Prospector of the Greek Alliance.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
My first thought to this comment was two men sitting at a table, and one opening a box of cards, with the attached note: "Enjoy my collection. I had fun playing with these old cards."
They open the box to reveal nothing but Homelands cards.
"Who sold this to you?"
"...Nobody..."
"You mean these are yours?"
"NO! NOBODY SOLD ME THESE CARDS!"
I just find very funny that, with some very rare exceptions, people who compare any set to Homelands did not EVER played with Homelands, some of them probably even did not hold any Homelands paper card in their hands. And if a poster is comparing something to something he/she actually does not know and has no experience with, well, that speaks volumes about the poster.
But I understand that it may seem cool to ride the bandwagon with the other kids and screaming left and right
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Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Am I the only one disappointed we didn't get a complete cycle of battlemages or ultimatums? Many of the cycles of Shards remain incomplete.
Not feeling the wedge love right now.
Probably, yes.
If we got wedge battlemages and ultimatums, I guarantee you that there would be people be whining about lazy design, blatantly copying Alara, etc.
Really, I do not understand why we should necessarily have wedge battlemages and ultimatums here. That was specifics of Alara block.
And we got plenty of other nice wedge cards.
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Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Am I the only one disappointed we didn't get a complete cycle of battlemages or ultimatums? Many of the cycles of Shards remain incomplete.
Not feeling the wedge love right now.
Probably, yes.
If we got wedge battlemages and ultimatums, I guarantee you that there would be people be whining about lazy design, blatantly copying Alara, etc.
Really, I do not understand why we should necessarily have wedge battlemages and ultimatums here. That was specifics of Alara block.
And we got plenty of other nice wedge cards.
Ultimatus were tied to Alara but the Battlemages were before. They were from the Planeshift and were a great way of having a mono-colour interacting with other colours. I mean just look at Stormscape Battlemage.
For me, it is a good way to distinguish the feel between shards and wedges. One are getting something, the other not.
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Former Fact Prospector of the Greek Alliance.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
I'm still trying to discern if this is equal to or worse than theros overall. Its pretty clearly in the same territory. The thing theros had going for it was some great flavor and art points. I don't see that here. They're both craptastic designwise and powerwise, but I think this is even missing the art points.
I'm still trying to discern if this is equal to or worse than theros overall. Its pretty clearly in the same territory. The thing theros had going for it was some great flavor and art points. I don't see that here. They're both craptastic designwise and powerwise, but I think this is even missing the art points.
To me Khans seems like a watered down Shards of Alara with a better land base and a Kamigawa look and feel. Theros has some problems but is a better constructed set.
Half the cards are depicting the same things over and over again. Notice that one card with a humanoid standing in a funky eastern dance pose? Any charm you'd get from seeing houses on elephants is lost when five cards do it. But mostly, whats wrong with the flavor is that there isn't anything remarkable with the flavor. A set like innistrad went and tapped a huge wealth of varied tropes and did its own riffs on them. It had flavor up the wazoo, each card had a story to tell. Now look at this set. This set is pretty much the basic vanilla world building panel of MTG. Take a look at Village Cannibals and compare it to High Sentinels of Arashin. One card is a flavor home run that is unique and charming. Its not just its bold art choice, the rest of the card is doing it well. Besides the cringe I get looking at bird people on the art, the high sentinels is a completely dull card flavorwise. Its some generic bird creature doing bird stuff. The whole flavor depth of this set could be encompassed on a notecard in normal handwriting. You've got not-mongol hordes fighting in the desert. Some are orcs, humans, snakes and birds. Half the people depicted on cards look like they are propped up by crouching tiger hidden dragon wires, and then theres some houses on elephants.
1. No good one mana spells
2a. Push about a dozen cards by giving them above curve bodies and upside
2b. Those pushed cards should almost all be rare, maybe in a cycle
2c. Push a cycle of exciting mythics as the face of the deck, but only make 1-2 of them low enough CMC to be played
3. Have 1-2 limited only mechanics that end up taking most of the design space of the set
4. Creature removal is either conditional, above 3CMC, or both. +1 cost for exile, nothing hits lands.
5. Remove combo by removing useful cantrips and making combos require 3-4+ pieces and cost 3-5 mana a piece
6. Limit synergy by reducing the number of playable enablers, especially for your limited-only mechanics.
And thus the midrange game becomes the hallmark of standard. Remove cheap removal and combo, and all that is left are fatties.
I knew there'd be whining if this wasn't the next Innistrad, but those comparing this to Theros are hilarious. Theros had a few bombs, but so does this, as well as a whole heap of playable uncommons and even commons that are INITIALLY noteworthy, let alone as opinion improves with discovered potential.
I'm especially going to look forward to drafting this, but I see plenty of interested constructed routes here as well.
I don't see how its much different from the 'factions' in Innistrad, where they just renamed things from real life...Like, Ghosts became Geists, Werewolves....were Werewolves. Skaabern was just an exact copy of frankenstein.
If all Innistrad had given us was cards like "Evil Vampire" and "Big Bad Werewolf" and "Scary Geists", if all it had done is stuck with that tribal elemental with the groundwork of what bases they wanted to touch, then it would have been a pathetic set flavorwise. Thats the world building groundwork you lay where you get all the structures in place before you develop the finer aspects. KTK pretty much stops there. You have the tribes and their defining characteristics, but where is the fine work built out of it? Innistrad had unremarkable flavorless filler cards like abbey griffin, darkthicket wolf, falkenrath noble, etc that just painted by the numbers of their world building. But it also had cards that took the set's subject material and built it into some flavor homeruns, for example loyal cathar, delver of secrets or rooftop storm- cards that were telling stories.
Theros block had its rescue from the underworld and king macar, the gold-cursed, hundred-handed one and some other goodies. I'm not seeing that in KTK. I'm seeing filler, and I'm seeing more filler. Uninspired vanilla output of world building, without being wrought into anything special
I think people complaining about the set's flavor should pinpoint what the flavor actually should have been like. I think there are two problems:
1. Tarkir isn't a flavor-focused block. It has a general theme, but not every card is expected to tie into it from a flavor perspective. This first set is about the five warring clans, and from that perspective, every card I've seen makes the game feel like it's taking place in a world with those five clans fighting for dominance.
2. What is the flavor of Tarkir supposed to be? Innistrad was clearly marketed as a Gothic Horror set. If the flavor for Innistrad was unsatisfactory, players could point to Gothic Horror tropes and ask "Why wasn't this in there?" "Why didn't you convey this more effectively?" Khans should not be compared to a set whose flavor is based on real world archetypes because that's not the goal of the set. I've heard some people say Ravnica is slightly based on Slavic settings. Is Ravnica a flavor failure because there are no Slavic tropes? No, because the flavor theme of Ravnica isn't Slavic, it's two-color pairings.
Easy example of a good common is Hooting Mandrills; a 4/4 Trampler for 6 mana with delve. Yet the mandrills reward the player for having cards in the yard and with just five in the yard you can throw down a 4/4 Trampler for G. Which would have been at least an uncommon in Theros.
Theros =/= Khans of Tarkir.
----------------------------
Club Flamingo Wins: 10
----------------------------
EDH Decks
BG Vicious Varolz | RW Jor Kadeen, the Mean Machine | RG Atarka: Muh_Dragons.dec (WIP) | WU Brago, Blink Eternal (WIP)
----------------------------
Oh no he didn't!
I would like to see more asymmetry and fewer cycles. Perhaps with the absence of the core set we will see a bit more design space within each block?
I understand MTG is trying to pull back the power creep and that's fair enough. But now it feels like they're taking us back to the days of Legends with these overcosted and tri-coloured cards that would still barely be playable even if they cost 1-2 less and and weren't so colour intensive. And what's with all the uncommon cards printed as rares?
This next block after Khans better be like Urza's Saga meets Mirrodin with power 9 reprints after all this crap.
In any case, on behalf of all of your Standard opponents for the next 4 months or so, I would like to say that I think your proposal of barely changing your decks at all with a handful of obvious substitutions is a great idea and you should definitely do it.
The problem is that humans are pattern makers. We see the boxes, and we want them filled.
People kept making comments about Planeswalkers of certain two color combos not being present. People kept talking about wedges. People complained when there wasn't a legendary Werewolf in Innistrad block, despite legends for every other tribe. If this, the Wedge set, quite possibly the only Wedge set we'll get for some time, didn't have a mechanic that worked in the WBG deck only, people would be furious. Hell, people were mad when they looked at Naya and didn't see the "mechanic" at all.
Fortifications are Artifacts. By their very nature, they must be playable in all decks, regardless of color choice or mana-base, in almost every scenario. It wouldn't feel right to give a mechanic that worked for every deck and put it into a certain wedge, and say "There Wedge, that's your mechanic, enjoy it." It would be like if Esper got all those Artifact Matters cards, but the artifacts were all colors, as opposed to fitting within the Shard. And I'm noting Esper because it serves as another point. If the WGB wedge became Fortifications, and they had to make it unique and therefore made colored artifacts, it might start treading on Esper's toes in the eyes of the public.
Have you actually played with Homelands?
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
They open the box to reveal nothing but Homelands cards.
"Who sold this to you?"
"...Nobody..."
"You mean these are yours?"
"NO! NOBODY SOLD ME THESE CARDS!"
I just find very funny that, with some very rare exceptions, people who compare any set to Homelands did not EVER played with Homelands, some of them probably even did not hold any Homelands paper card in their hands. And if a poster is comparing something to something he/she actually does not know and has no experience with, well, that speaks volumes about the poster.
But I understand that it may seem cool to ride the bandwagon with the other kids and screaming left and right
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Me too. And that is why I would never compare any modern set with it
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Probably, yes.
If we got wedge battlemages and ultimatums, I guarantee you that there would be people be whining about lazy design, blatantly copying Alara, etc.
Really, I do not understand why we should necessarily have wedge battlemages and ultimatums here. That was specifics of Alara block.
And we got plenty of other nice wedge cards.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
For me, it is a good way to distinguish the feel between shards and wedges. One are getting something, the other not.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
What's wrong with the art?
Half the cards are depicting the same things over and over again. Notice that one card with a humanoid standing in a funky eastern dance pose? Any charm you'd get from seeing houses on elephants is lost when five cards do it. But mostly, whats wrong with the flavor is that there isn't anything remarkable with the flavor. A set like innistrad went and tapped a huge wealth of varied tropes and did its own riffs on them. It had flavor up the wazoo, each card had a story to tell. Now look at this set. This set is pretty much the basic vanilla world building panel of MTG. Take a look at Village Cannibals and compare it to High Sentinels of Arashin. One card is a flavor home run that is unique and charming. Its not just its bold art choice, the rest of the card is doing it well. Besides the cringe I get looking at bird people on the art, the high sentinels is a completely dull card flavorwise. Its some generic bird creature doing bird stuff. The whole flavor depth of this set could be encompassed on a notecard in normal handwriting. You've got not-mongol hordes fighting in the desert. Some are orcs, humans, snakes and birds. Half the people depicted on cards look like they are propped up by crouching tiger hidden dragon wires, and then theres some houses on elephants.
1. No good one mana spells
2a. Push about a dozen cards by giving them above curve bodies and upside
2b. Those pushed cards should almost all be rare, maybe in a cycle
2c. Push a cycle of exciting mythics as the face of the deck, but only make 1-2 of them low enough CMC to be played
3. Have 1-2 limited only mechanics that end up taking most of the design space of the set
4. Creature removal is either conditional, above 3CMC, or both. +1 cost for exile, nothing hits lands.
5. Remove combo by removing useful cantrips and making combos require 3-4+ pieces and cost 3-5 mana a piece
6. Limit synergy by reducing the number of playable enablers, especially for your limited-only mechanics.
And thus the midrange game becomes the hallmark of standard. Remove cheap removal and combo, and all that is left are fatties.
I'm especially going to look forward to drafting this, but I see plenty of interested constructed routes here as well.
Playtesting | Karador, Ghost Chieftain | Narset, Enlightened Master | Ephara, God of the Polis
Established | Gahiji, Honored One | Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker | Opal-Eye, Konda's Yojimbo | Rubinia Soulsinger
Retired | Medomai the Ageless | Diaochan, Artful Beauty
If all Innistrad had given us was cards like "Evil Vampire" and "Big Bad Werewolf" and "Scary Geists", if all it had done is stuck with that tribal elemental with the groundwork of what bases they wanted to touch, then it would have been a pathetic set flavorwise. Thats the world building groundwork you lay where you get all the structures in place before you develop the finer aspects. KTK pretty much stops there. You have the tribes and their defining characteristics, but where is the fine work built out of it? Innistrad had unremarkable flavorless filler cards like abbey griffin, darkthicket wolf, falkenrath noble, etc that just painted by the numbers of their world building. But it also had cards that took the set's subject material and built it into some flavor homeruns, for example loyal cathar, delver of secrets or rooftop storm- cards that were telling stories.
Theros block had its rescue from the underworld and king macar, the gold-cursed, hundred-handed one and some other goodies. I'm not seeing that in KTK. I'm seeing filler, and I'm seeing more filler. Uninspired vanilla output of world building, without being wrought into anything special
1. Tarkir isn't a flavor-focused block. It has a general theme, but not every card is expected to tie into it from a flavor perspective. This first set is about the five warring clans, and from that perspective, every card I've seen makes the game feel like it's taking place in a world with those five clans fighting for dominance.
2. What is the flavor of Tarkir supposed to be? Innistrad was clearly marketed as a Gothic Horror set. If the flavor for Innistrad was unsatisfactory, players could point to Gothic Horror tropes and ask "Why wasn't this in there?" "Why didn't you convey this more effectively?" Khans should not be compared to a set whose flavor is based on real world archetypes because that's not the goal of the set. I've heard some people say Ravnica is slightly based on Slavic settings. Is Ravnica a flavor failure because there are no Slavic tropes? No, because the flavor theme of Ravnica isn't Slavic, it's two-color pairings.
I had a nice laugh at that one!