How I miss the old style land art, where you see serenity instead of drama.
Agreed. They really need to bring that back. Also genuine painting, not waxy digital renders
digital renders are fine... if you have a variety of styles available. the issue is uniformity. art guidelines are currently so strict that you can barely recognize that images were made by different artists. ug land? it will sure use mostly blues and greens and you will be able to tell what colors it will produce without seeing textbox. while it has its pros it also makes everything look same-ish.
the fact that you might not use this card does not invalidate the fact that using it would make the deck better.
But that's barely. I wouldn't want to take anything out of any deck and making it less synergistic just for the chance of one out of twenty games I get to show off and then get reamed by the table.
Honestly, this card throws out subtlety in the hopes that no one can stop you. It's still a good card, but not the Commander destroyer, #1 card of all time some are making it out to be.
i disagree. if your deck leans on the commander in any way then using this will always be improvement. of course the degree of improvement depends on the deck and power level of the meta but even if you use in decks from casual end of the spectrum it will still be very good since decks at that power level tend to not have that much low cmc interaction to punish you. and on the competitive end of the spectrum... well people play gemstone cavern for a reason, casting 4cmc commander t1 is something people will want to do.
what i don't like is the play patterns it incentivizes - as you pointed out it strengthens all-in strategies and makes games more draw dependent. which is an unnecessary development for any format. but yes, the sky is not falling.
Go ahead and quibble about how it’s a dead card when you’re commander is out and protected (so you’re already in a strong position if not winning).
It puts out your commander early or pays for tax. There are extremely few decks where this isn’t an auto-include.
I think I'll find a way to not include it in any of my decks from Goreclaw to Daretti, Tariel to Phenax, Atraxa to Torbran, Mazirek to Melek, Scarab God to Ravos+Kraum, R/G Omnath to Tiana. In any of those Daretti and Goreclaw are the only two that really wants to get out turn one or far faster than they normally would, but then I have no protection and I put a target on my back so large I might as well scoop then and there.
I'll find a way to survive without it. Sol Ring is far more auto include than this shiny flower.
the fact that you might not use this card does not invalidate the fact that using it would make the deck better. and this is the issue people are having with it. obviously you can easily just not put that card in your deck and the deck will still funcion... in the same way that you can take out sol ring from decks you are running it in and be still fine.
i don't think this wil be a problem in casual decks but it might be an issue when played in optimized builds or cedh decks.
in the end this is a card that the format do not need and noone asked for.
This card is very, very good. Even in the most casual games this will generate some form of card advantage and lasting lock effect (so more card advantage since opponent needs to use removal on it). It's really sad that again the best type of this kind of effect is being printed outside of white. Compared to Aven Mindcensor that dumb bird looks pretty bleak both effect-wise and stats-wise.
The Scapeshift player just won't sac any land, and you'll get nothing. It's just a fancy counterspell in this case.
They were thinking too small, imagine resolving this in response to Doomsday.
I think this will be very interesting card to play with but maybe not necessarily fun to play against. It will generate interesting decision patterns e.g. do I cast this now in response to fetchland or do I wait to snipe Tinker for Bolas's Citadel?
These are also meant to replace the PW intro decks so seems about right power-level wise.
It's not power-level the problem it's just incredibly boring. They could have tried making simic sea monster tribal or something new like that instead it's just bland ***** we have already seen.
Design of those is uninspired, isn't it? They just put statistically most common abilities from respective parts of pie and called it a day. But I can understand why they did that - this is supposed to replace planeswalker decks so the target is not established players but rather they are meant as an introduction to the format/game. Makes sense to make the cards use mechanics that are "iconic" for the colors.
I think they could put a bit more effort by not reusing that part of color pie that was reused ad nauseam in most recent sets. For example UG could have been water hydras, +1/+1 counters see creatures or something. Similar theme but different mechanics, less overlapping with cards from recent sets. Tiro should still be happy with that.
I really really hope it doesn't become format turning in pauper
(It’s common in commander legends so now it’s pauper legal)
oh nice. there is enough decks that go wide with creatures that this should be no problem but might become a good option for ub, tortex and mbc especially if people want to play unearth. i know that i will at least test that last option.
I’m not into constructed so much anymore but even in limited the moment Omnath comes down, if you have no way to immediately deal with it, scoop.
2019/2020’s Standard season has been a giant clusterf*ck the likes I haven’t seen in years. How many banned cards from Eldraine does that make now?
‘Buster
a dozen or so. /EDIT sorry that would be ~15 from few recent sets in all available formats. not really much better.
it should not be a surprise to anyone that this will be the end result of FIRE design philosophy. it's basically moving beta testing of sets from inside rnd to open environment.
the problem is that only cards supporting certain strategies are being pushed which ends up in unbalanced meta instead of multiple powerful decks. eg 7/10 top cards from pioneer meta is u and 6/10 comes with no card disadvantage.
Standard:
Omnath, Locus of Creation is banned.
Lucky Clover is banned.
Escape to the Wilds is banned.
Historic:
Omnath, Locus of Creation is suspended.
Teferi, Time Raveler is banned.
Wilderness Reclamation is banned.
Burning-Tree Emissary is unsuspended.
Honestly I'm fine with them pushing power level and sometimes having to ban things as a result. It means that we get more cool, powerful cards instead of nice, safe, boring cards. That said, the ideal situation is that they push threat power while simultaneously printing efficient removal and counterspells. It is really important for the health of the competitive scene that they stop listening to the brats who whine about having their big plays answered.
The point being "sometimes", not the clusterf*ck we've seen for the last year and a half, but yeah, they print busted crap like Omnath and instead of bringing back some good answers like Mana Leak at least or Doom Blade (God forbid they ever try and see if good ol' Counterspell is safe at this point),they take their sweet time to finally print a solid removal spell,also, too many powerful cards on their own right come with "draw a card" or "gain life" tacked on to them, often together like f****g Uro or Omnath, which means answering them with spot removal is a losing proposition, and the lifegain bit preemptively counters a burn spell just in case/blanks the free hit the opponent gets from you playing a ramp spell that adds nothing to the board.
It's clear testing is failing miserably, what I wonder is how bad is it going to be with the following sets, they KNEW Omnath+Fires, just to name one very stupid thing were going to be together in Standard, and still let those go through...and the less said about 1-mana Dismiss, 3feri or Broko the better.
yeah the whole "gives extra value immediately even if answered" is a pretty big problem nowadays.
i mean, If I cast 4 Omnaths, you kill all 4 right away.
I can still have 4 cards in hand I got from it entering the play and 16 extra life from the lands I play the turn I play Omnath before I pass priority.....
so, even a 0 mana instant that says exile target omnath will still leave you laggin behind while you answer my omnaths.
would things like extirpate / surgical extraction / slaughter games be good enough to serve as balanced answers? it still leaves the problem that those are sb cards while uro is md card but maybe such effects would be enough.
I was fine with MLP showing up as a fun random who cares and understood they only came about from Hasbro owning them, at the very least proceeds went to charity, and they are not usually playable. Me liking it probably had something to do with it too.
I was fine with Godzilla stuff popping up as they were just fancy alternate versions of real cards, and fit the theme of the set.
i would really like to see sales figures from this sl and mlp cards for comparison.
they could easily assure everyone that those cards can be reprinted by putting normal version in addition in this sl or release second version of this sl not tied to external ip. but they didn't.
what i don't like is the play patterns it incentivizes - as you pointed out it strengthens all-in strategies and makes games more draw dependent. which is an unnecessary development for any format. but yes, the sky is not falling.
one might say that after few turns negative effects start showing up during upkeep.
are there any null profusion variants that would work with obeka?
i don't think this wil be a problem in casual decks but it might be an issue when played in optimized builds or cedh decks.
in the end this is a card that the format do not need and noone asked for.
They were thinking too small, imagine resolving this in response to Doomsday.
I think this will be very interesting card to play with but maybe not necessarily fun to play against. It will generate interesting decision patterns e.g. do I cast this now in response to fetchland or do I wait to snipe Tinker for Bolas's Citadel?
I think they could put a bit more effort by not reusing that part of color pie that was reused ad nauseam in most recent sets. For example UG could have been water hydras, +1/+1 counters see creatures or something. Similar theme but different mechanics, less overlapping with cards from recent sets. Tiro should still be happy with that.
oh nice. there is enough decks that go wide with creatures that this should be no problem but might become a good option for ub, tortex and mbc especially if people want to play unearth. i know that i will at least test that last option.
it should not be a surprise to anyone that this will be the end result of FIRE design philosophy. it's basically moving beta testing of sets from inside rnd to open environment.
the problem is that only cards supporting certain strategies are being pushed which ends up in unbalanced meta instead of multiple powerful decks. eg 7/10 top cards from pioneer meta is u and 6/10 comes with no card disadvantage.
picks up bag of popcorn...
Standard:
Omnath, Locus of Creation is banned.
Lucky Clover is banned.
Escape to the Wilds is banned.
Historic:
Omnath, Locus of Creation is suspended.
Teferi, Time Raveler is banned.
Wilderness Reclamation is banned.
Burning-Tree Emissary is unsuspended.
Brawl:
Omnath, Locus of Creation is banned.
Effective Date: October 12, 2020
would things like extirpate / surgical extraction / slaughter games be good enough to serve as balanced answers? it still leaves the problem that those are sb cards while uro is md card but maybe such effects would be enough.
they could easily assure everyone that those cards can be reprinted by putting normal version in addition in this sl or release second version of this sl not tied to external ip. but they didn't.
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/cards/zendikar-rising/39652-branchloft-pathway
vs
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/cards/zendikar-rising/39659-timbercrown-pathway