My impression from the people who are disappointed with the set is different from yours though. I think people are complaining that buying a low number of boosters is much more risky than in regular sets, which you point out in the end:
This means that for people not to lose when buying masters 25 they have to cash out on a box (or something close to that), which is already a high entry barrier for what is supposed to be a celebration set.Buying individual packs is much more of a gamble, given the higher price, but booster boxes will pay out their expected value.
I don't know, just leaves a bad taste in your mouth knowing that WoTC is basically forcing you to spend a lot of money for you to get a decent return on your investment. Not to mention that I'm a bit skeptical about the value retention capacity of many cards from the mythic and rare list after the market gets flooded with more copies. Anyway, I think the conclusion is that if you have the money to buy a box and wants to, there is no harm in doing that, but don't try to gamble on individual packs.
I bet if we had good URs then there wouldn't be that much derailing in the discussions, because we would have much more to talk about it. Of course, I don't think that justifies the rising animosity, but people in discussions with strong opinions (almost everyone one that is here) tend to get things a little heated once in a while.
I wasn't talking about what the color green represents to magic the gathering the game. I was talking about Nature and how Nissa is wrong about it. Maybe you can justify that in a fantasy world where you can make 'souls' for the planes Nature would work in a different way, but I'm taking a grounded approach based on how it works in our world. Nissa is wrong about Nature, or at least the way they represent her shows me that she is wrong.
EDIT: I will edit this here because I'm sure it can cause some confusion. What I said about green is that Garruk is a better impersonation of green to me. What I said about Nissa is that she is wrong in the way she thinks about Nature. Garruk to me incorporates all the traits that you mentioned. He had wisdow to deal with nature and its beasts, he was in 'harmony' with it (I don't like this term very much), and he definetly knew his place: at the top of the food chain.
EDIT2: I saw now that on my second paragraph I said "Nissa does not get green at all". I stand for this point of view, but honestly what I mean there was Nature as a whole, the physical world, not the psychological aspect of green of Wisdow, Nurturing, Destiny etc. The literal physical part of it, but now it is already typed as green and I will leave it be.
I don't recall hearing of animals that 'kill for sport', specially because I don't know what that would mean to an animal. I'm a biologist, but zoology is not my field of expertise, though I wouldn't mind references if people are talking about that.
All that said, I will also add that Garruk is not only a better green character to me, he is a better impersonation of green himself. One quote of him that has marked me is something in the line of: "People think that I am a monster. They are wrong. I am a thousand of them". That just sums up how much more interesting he is to me - a natural predator, a man who has lived among nature and adopted it, learned all from its creatures and acquired his own strengh. Meanwhile Nissa was an elf supremacist retconned to be a nature lover, but I just can't buy this whole 'everything is connected' BS. Because, truly, nothing really is. Nature isn't about everything being 'connected' (whatever that is suppose to be), Nature exists in a dynamic equilibrium that is constantly being thrown of balance due to natural disasters, invasive species, weather changes (in the short term) and geographical changes (generally in the long term). Nature is not 'looking' for balance, equilibrium, or connection. Everything that lives is trying to spread their genes, and if that happens at the cost of everything else they will not give a damn, period. Just look at an algal bloom for instance. The algae will spread, suck up all the oxygen, release toxins in the waters and block the sunlight from everything else, but it does not matter to it, it is just doing its thing.
Of course that we have exceptions from symbiotic relationships or other positive interactions between different organisms, and mostly species in their natural habitat are already in the constant dynamic equilibrium that I mentioned, that is why they are not seen as 'harmful'. Now you introduce a species from somewhere else and see what happens. Nissa is not only bad because she is a different aspect of green, but because she does not get green AT ALL. I will concede that this is probably not 'her' fault, but from the common misconception spread throughout layman that influenced her creation. I would say that, instead of 'connected', in nature everything is 'dependant' on each other, in the sense that when you affect one part of it, there is a ripple effect that spreads throughout its many levels. Of course, you could use 'connection' to explain that, but people usually read connection as something positive, like every living organism is integrated to its habitat in a perfect and harmonious way (when it comes to nature, that is how it is read). Nissa is wrong, Garruk was right. He is better and more interesting to me.
About the story as a whole, two lines about it: it didn't read bad, it was just bland. I didn't mind reading it, it wasn't particularly boring per se (at least this time), but nothing happened again. That was a non-story if such a thing exists, and I don't know why we are still following Nissa at this point.
I don't know what was your criteria to make up this list of yours, but as a magic player I can only agree with:
- The Battle Lands (not tango lands, not super-check lands, not laglands. Battle lands is the only thing that works for me). They are good, but I'm not excited by them and I would not be suprised to see that they will be forgotten once they rotate out.
- The manlands
- Ruinous Path
- Bring to Light
- Brutal Expulsion
- Radiant Flames
- Painful Truths
- Gideon
- Ulamog
- Ob nixilis
- Drana
The rest of the cards you mentioned are almost all of them unplayable or just really not good cards that will have to see play because there is nothing else to do their job (scatter to the winds will have to fill the role of dissolve in control decks). So, as you can see, the list is much shorter than you make it look like. I may be wrong, of course, maybe greenwarden of murasa will be good enough since it is double recursion, but in general I think it will be reduced to the few cards I listed.
Give me a good reason to not report you for flaming, please. You were rude and aggressive in this conversation from the very start, your use of sarcasm and now just outright insults is just a proof that you have nothing relevant to add and can only use ad hominem as your strategy for debate. I will give you at least one post to apologize before reporting you.
If you would just have the trouble of scrolling up a couple posts before answering me, you would see that someone else said the same thing that you said and I have addressed it. I did not mention Ashiok for milling implications. Please, read before posting.
The point here is: the upside of playing cards with ingest only 'exists' inside this block, which is already bad, and it is not a great upside, which is terrible. Roast is still a better, more reliable way to deal with a rhino, the processors are all bad with the exception of the one that counters and the one that gives -3/-3. For a creature with ingest to be played it will only be played because it is a good creature, not because it has ingest on it, and at this point the mechanic is just a total failure. You can have decent/good creatures with ingest, they just will not be decent/good because of it, and since we are discussing the mechanic and not the creatures, oh well, I hope you see the point now.
P.S.: what I meant by mentioning Ashiok is that it does a better job of filling the exile for the processors to be used, I wasn't even thinking about milling.
Two things mate:
- It makes absolutely no sense to analyze cards and mechanics thinking that they 'might be good in the future'. Nobody knows what is coming, that doesn't stop anyone from saying that a mechanic is terrible when it is, otherwise we would never be able to discuss a card.
- Newsflash: ingest will still be bad even if they print the most support for it. Wanna know why? Because it is too friggring slow! Exiling ONE card at a time is horrendous. Ashiok alone does the job of three ingest creatures attacking and connecting, shame Ashiok is rotating out. By the point the sheer number of exile cards become relevant, your ingest creatures probably killed your opponent already. The mechanic sucks, if you don't see that, I'm sorry.
Pro-tip: this is your first post and everything, so try to be nice would you? The original post here was just saying that this set seems to have some issues because it is receiving more backlash than a set usually does, which I agree. Just saying everyone that complains is dumb or thinks the same does not advance any argument here.
Ingest, on the other hand, is plain terrible. Just such a slow mechanic that basically only works inside the block it was constructed to work (splice into arcane anyone?). I hate mechanincs that are only relevant in their blocks, it is a waste of design space.
I don't think anyone would main deck dispel in a limited deck. In any case, no, the instants aren't good. Just for the sake of argument, this 'rampant growth' at instant speed is really really bad at 3CMC. Why would you play that instead of Nissa's Pilgrimage? (I'm talking about constructed here). Sure the ramp spell can help fixing your mana, and it can be used to trigger landfall at instant speed (oh, how relevant!). Nissa's pilgrimage is better. Why? If you are using a ramp deck, you want to get more mana every turn, and pilgrimage is useful for that, guaranteeing the next land drop, mana fixing is a lesser concern (unless you are playing some weird ramp-converge deck). And I'm not even mentioning that pilgrimage has the upside of spell mastery. Oh, but wait, how much play pilgrimage sees now? None. Will that be so in the next set? Maybe not, maybe monogreen eldrazi ramp is a thing, but even a card that is much better than your bad rampant growth has a hard time seeing play in standard.
- Twin is a "I win" combo. This combo you are naming is not, is just making a big knight of the reliquary that still dies to removal (and the removal stops the combo at any point, just kill knight is response to its fetch ability). Twin is also a combo that you can do in one turn (end step of your opponent + your main phase). This one you have to have a knight that is not summoning sick + your enchantment. Really, comparing the two combos is terrible.
- Phantom Nantuko is arguably a much better card than undergrowth champion. Not sure if you noticed but you can kill champion with a bolt in response to its landfall trigger as well, when he has no counters and die you know? Also in modern there are plenty of ways to deal with creatures that are not damage based (just to name 3: abrupt decay, terminate and path).
Soul sister is not a relevant modern deck, and it is very questionable if the flexibility of o-ring would be surpassed by this new card with flash.
Yeah, combo interaction in the format running bolt, terminate and abrupt decay you would allow yourself to play retreat to coralhelm in the chance you get to combo, sure sure.
Strong contender? Anger of the gods, though it is harder to splash, is definetly a better card (just naming two reasons why: voice and kitchen finks).
Steppe lynx doesn't play zoo, scythe leopard hardly stands any chance.
Drana is cool, but the only possible shell that she could play is B/W tokens at the moment.
Complete disregard, swell of growth and undergroth champion are just terrible cards for modern. I will be shocked if swell of growth gets anywhere near infect, the pump is just too small to be worth it when you have things like might of old krosa, become immense and vines of the vastwood.
Vampiric rites of all the cards you named is the only one that gets me one eyebrown raised and that is about it. The only truly cards for modern so far are the manlands and the new sowing salt against tron. Maybe Blisterpod will see play in the new next level abzan since it is almost strictly better than tukatongue thallid. Honestly man, you are just pushing here.
He, true story mate, true story. Ashiok doesn't give a damn about genders!
And yes, nobody will notice that on the Ulamog card.
It felt really weird for me too! "It" would have been much better, though to be honest we are used to associate "it" with "he", so if someone said "Ulamog and his spawns" nobody would bat an eye, which makes me think there is some prejudice involved to see "her" being used and looking weird.