If you judge a person's intelligence by their upbringing, then you kind of disqualified yourself.
Also, wit =/= knowledge. Additionally, education is such a biased term. Garruk knows a LOT of things you don't, just that he didn't learn it in books. Education usually ecompasses only a narrow set of knowledge, useful mostly within the boundaries of civilization.
First you say strength cannot be measured on a linear scale and then you do the exact same thing with intelligence and knowledge. This is the beauty of people claiming they're smarter than others, it usually backfires.
It's known that the phrase "match wits against" colloquially means to put ones mental faculties against that of another.
Education is not a biased term unless you bias it yourself. Garruk is educated in his own way. His father taught him farming and nature magic. That is a form of education. It doesn't require a classroom or books. Gideon received an apprenticeship style education from Hixus. These aren't "traditional" educations the way we in modern times think of it but they are none the less forms of it. Certainly everyone knows things that I don't as I know things that others don't, that is simply the nature of something which is infinite. However; It's measurable. In the same way Garruk's ability to knock me out is measurable. For example: If I want to lead an army in straight combat I'm going to go looking for Odric, Master Tactician but if I can't find I'm I wont be afraid to do it myself if Garruk is my opponent. However if we're going to perform an ambush in the jungle I'll take Garruk. My point remains that it is unfair to try and measure characters against each other without any sort of categorization. I mean seriously, how is it fair to try and measure Garruk or Gideon, accomplished warriors, against Jace or Tamiyo who are renowned intellectuals? And there really is no comparing Bolas and Ugin to any of the rest of them.
When you look at it like that, it makes sense. There was what, less than 800 people playing? I guess the real good stuff will have to wait.
I mean it happens every set release. Of the players that attend the events prior to the PT those that will be at the PT play a deck that is already a known quantity in order to hide their innovations. I mean I'm sure CFB and the Pantheon are already deep in testing and will have their house near the venue rented soon. None of them even attended the Open and their wasn't a GP to be played this weekend. And by that I'd be surprised if any of the players on the major teams will be at Dallas next weekend. Most of the times if they play at something its one that is near the event site which in this case is Vancouver. However that does mean that Dallas will in all likely-hood be wide open next week.
Eh, that final was a pure showcase of Magic's bad side. Mize scrys 10+ times in game 2 and can't find one of his 12 instants that would win the game, and then has to mull to 3 in game 3 and can't draw a second land. Massive favourite in the matchup, gets beaten entirely by his own bad luck. Always a shame to see, especially as Tuan had lucksacked his way past Mirriam in the previous round too despite making error upon error upon error. <Must be nice to win a Top 8 even though you play like ***** because your opponents get screwed over by chance.>
Anyway, I'm slightly disappointed by the decks present to be honest, but I think I've just been spoiled by both Khans and Dragons previously. Not much innovation. The 5-Colour Rally deck was hilarious but was always going to start losing when people realised what he was doing (it reminded me of that Jeskai Ascendancy Heroic combo deck a few months back in that once you knew the plan, you could stop it). The only actually interesting new brew was the UW Thopter deck, but again that might just be because Hoogland is a really good player. I remember him absolutely tearing it up with a UR Dragons deck post-DTK that looked the bees knees, but in actuality amounted to nothing at all - it was just that Hoogland overperformed with it because he's excellent at the game.
We'll have to see what comes of the metagame, but from this it looks like the two best decks in the format (Abzan Control and Gr Devotion) are still the uncontested best decks in the format.
Please keep the criticism constructive. Thanks! -- Lugger
Of course there's no innovation. All the big names are keeping their best kept secrets for the Pro Tour. People like Brad Nelson and Ross Mirriam were playing a deck for the sake of playing. Give it a couple weeks and The real innovations from origins will come to bare.
Out of the living PLaneswalkers:
Bolas> Ugin (As he needed Sarkhan's help) > Sorin/Nahiri (Assuming Nahiri's alive and well, if not, probs after the next one) > Liliana
Why do you assume Garruk (and Gideon) are not intelligent?
I didn't say they're dumb but I'd match my wit and education vs a street tough or a "boy raised by wolves" any day. Sure they may have combat intelligence but I wouldn't want either leading an army or trying to solve some kind of problem to which hitting is not the solution. My point was that most of the walkers have specialties that make trying to create a general power ranking unfair. If you're ranking based on ability to cause widespread devastation then certainly Chandra, Kiora or Ral who have the very elements at their beck and call will be higher ranked than the likes of Jace or Dack. If you rank them on physical combat ability Gideon or Garruk will be highly ranked while Tamiyo and Ashiok will be left out in the cold. I think the only ones we can say are objectively the most powerful are Bolas and Ugin, perhaps with Karn a decent distance behind them.
When I get the chance I'll probably try to get Pia and Kiran Nalaar and Ghirapur Æther Grid for Daretti. There are probably others for my other decks but I haven't really done much thinking on it since I don't have the money to be buying cards right now.
Honestly I don't think straight up power rankings is fair. I mean I don't want to get into a fist fight with Garruk or Gideon but I'd match wits with either on any day. However I don't want to play chess with Jace or Tamiyo but I bet I could beat them in fisticuffs as long as I could keep Jace from doing what he did with the Gruul to beat Ruric-Thar in The Secretist. And if losing to Sorin means I might get him to make me a Vampire then I'll take a dive for superhuman powers and obscenely long life. I think Sarkhan has an advantage in that he can turn into a dragon.
But they're not. The change in story delivery doesn't change the way the game is made or played at all. It just means that there will be 5 cards depicting pivotal story moments and they will be fine. All of the things you're saying are muddling the colors aren't. Green getting draw based on it's creatures is still Green. Just because it's drawing cards doesn't mean it'd pulling from blue. It's not like another color is getting counter spells and they wont. MaRo guards the color pie as tightly as he can. Sure a Hornet Queen slips through every now and then but so what?. That doesn't mean that the colors are drifting together. As was mentioned above your point about Black removal is demonstrably wrong. As is the tutor point. Black has the ONLY unconditional tutors. Other colors get to find their things but Black gets whatever it wants. Like I said. You're complaining about something that doesn't actually exist. The colors are as distinct as ever if not more so.
Garruk was the classic embodiement of Green: it was about savagery, wilderness, brawn, etc. His origin story was very well done too: civilisation is less trustworthy than a beast. His character development was also amazing: he was a shy boy, he became hardened by nature, he found some trust in civilization (Jace), he got cursed and his curse is consuming him. Will he be cured? Will he die? Will he kill others? etc. All sorts of questions that could've been explored.
Nissa was very unidimensional: Zendikar is in trouble, must save Zendikar. Her UR story was very weak and not much was even learned. Heck, before any of this, she was a minor Neowalker.
My other concern is how much they have drifted away from the core color values and this is reflected in the cards. Take Nissa's abilities: it's all lands interactions or card advantage. Green used to have land animation but it was rare. Green used to have almost no draw spells. Now it's widespread.
Red used to have good aggressive archetypes with the only exceptions being dragons. Additionally, it has gotten more "draw and discard" cards. Red is getting muddled with green and blue.
White is the new black. It has more removal than the color embodiment of death. More small creatures with no drawbacks. More tutoring cards too!
Black has become the bastard child of the game. Removal, removed. Intricate power at a cost, gone. Zombies, buried. It has become nerfed into blue as a support color.
Origins somewhat comes back to those core color values. Almost! But imho, the game is going away from color themes and more into story themes that get assigned random colors.
That's not what it's about. Garruk is a fine but equally one dimensional character in the gameplay sense. I summon a dumb monster, I summon a bigger dumb monster. But that's not what it's about. They decided to let Garruk embrace his new black urges. He's an antagonist. The Origins 5 are protagonists. That's why Nissa was chosen.
Green is still very much about big dudes an bigger mana, which is always what it was about. So they gave it some ability for card advantage. That's a core part of the game and everyone should have access to it... well except White but that's another matter.
Used to? Red is still the number one aggro color. By far. Red is definitely NOT getting muddled they're just trying to expand it so that it can match up by itself against the other colors as I think we can all agree that of all the colors Red was the weakest relative to the others.
White is supposed to have a lot of answers. That's why it doesn't get a lot of card draw. It's also THE color for small dudes. It's the army color.
Black is a hard color to balance. "anything at a cost" is a fast way to break everything. For example we know that a reasonably costed card which gives you some ability at the cost of life will be pretty broken; reference Necropotence and Hatred. Black is still the color of straight up, unconditional kill. White's removal is either conditional or answerable. They recognize that things like Swords and Path were very wrong and sadly there's not much they can do about that for modern. Granted they're on a pendulum swing where removal is a little on the weak side in general but that's just what they do.
TL;DR: Seems to me like you're complaining about nothing.
Heck here would have been a good question: why Nissa instead of Garruk? She even got RetCon'ed. Another good one: why did you abandon the old color values and archetypes and what is the direction going forward from now since you decided to centralize the storyline?
Because Garruk is a bad guy now? What do you mean "abandoned the old color values and archetypes?"
It's known that the phrase "match wits against" colloquially means to put ones mental faculties against that of another.
Education is not a biased term unless you bias it yourself. Garruk is educated in his own way. His father taught him farming and nature magic. That is a form of education. It doesn't require a classroom or books. Gideon received an apprenticeship style education from Hixus. These aren't "traditional" educations the way we in modern times think of it but they are none the less forms of it. Certainly everyone knows things that I don't as I know things that others don't, that is simply the nature of something which is infinite. However; It's measurable. In the same way Garruk's ability to knock me out is measurable. For example: If I want to lead an army in straight combat I'm going to go looking for Odric, Master Tactician but if I can't find I'm I wont be afraid to do it myself if Garruk is my opponent. However if we're going to perform an ambush in the jungle I'll take Garruk. My point remains that it is unfair to try and measure characters against each other without any sort of categorization. I mean seriously, how is it fair to try and measure Garruk or Gideon, accomplished warriors, against Jace or Tamiyo who are renowned intellectuals? And there really is no comparing Bolas and Ugin to any of the rest of them.
I mean it happens every set release. Of the players that attend the events prior to the PT those that will be at the PT play a deck that is already a known quantity in order to hide their innovations. I mean I'm sure CFB and the Pantheon are already deep in testing and will have their house near the venue rented soon. None of them even attended the Open and their wasn't a GP to be played this weekend. And by that I'd be surprised if any of the players on the major teams will be at Dallas next weekend. Most of the times if they play at something its one that is near the event site which in this case is Vancouver. However that does mean that Dallas will in all likely-hood be wide open next week.
Of course there's no innovation. All the big names are keeping their best kept secrets for the Pro Tour. People like Brad Nelson and Ross Mirriam were playing a deck for the sake of playing. Give it a couple weeks and The real innovations from origins will come to bare.
Bolas had Yasovas help. ;P
I didn't say they're dumb but I'd match my wit and education vs a street tough or a "boy raised by wolves" any day. Sure they may have combat intelligence but I wouldn't want either leading an army or trying to solve some kind of problem to which hitting is not the solution. My point was that most of the walkers have specialties that make trying to create a general power ranking unfair. If you're ranking based on ability to cause widespread devastation then certainly Chandra, Kiora or Ral who have the very elements at their beck and call will be higher ranked than the likes of Jace or Dack. If you rank them on physical combat ability Gideon or Garruk will be highly ranked while Tamiyo and Ashiok will be left out in the cold. I think the only ones we can say are objectively the most powerful are Bolas and Ugin, perhaps with Karn a decent distance behind them.
Oh and Jeff Hoogland's Thopter control deck was pretty sweet too.
That's not what it's about. Garruk is a fine but equally one dimensional character in the gameplay sense. I summon a dumb monster, I summon a bigger dumb monster. But that's not what it's about. They decided to let Garruk embrace his new black urges. He's an antagonist. The Origins 5 are protagonists. That's why Nissa was chosen.
Green is still very much about big dudes an bigger mana, which is always what it was about. So they gave it some ability for card advantage. That's a core part of the game and everyone should have access to it... well except White but that's another matter.
Used to? Red is still the number one aggro color. By far. Red is definitely NOT getting muddled they're just trying to expand it so that it can match up by itself against the other colors as I think we can all agree that of all the colors Red was the weakest relative to the others.
White is supposed to have a lot of answers. That's why it doesn't get a lot of card draw. It's also THE color for small dudes. It's the army color.
Black is a hard color to balance. "anything at a cost" is a fast way to break everything. For example we know that a reasonably costed card which gives you some ability at the cost of life will be pretty broken; reference Necropotence and Hatred. Black is still the color of straight up, unconditional kill. White's removal is either conditional or answerable. They recognize that things like Swords and Path were very wrong and sadly there's not much they can do about that for modern. Granted they're on a pendulum swing where removal is a little on the weak side in general but that's just what they do.
TL;DR: Seems to me like you're complaining about nothing.
Because Garruk is a bad guy now? What do you mean "abandoned the old color values and archetypes?"