MTG Salvation

Darien, King of Kjeldor - Dying is a soldier's talent. (Martyr's Cause)

Quote from Dontrike »

Brimaz being on Daybreak Coronet art might as well be them saying "This should have been in Theros block."

They tried it, and then pulled it because it was too good.

Quote from kingfede »

Quote from DIABOLUS »

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Quote from Fjams »

Nice, now the big question is wether it will be rare or mythic.

If they put her at Mythic we have every right to riot. They've stated multiple times that MR should be reserved for unique and extremely powerful (as far as Limited is concerned, see Beguiler of Wills) or flavourful cards, while typical cards with a universal function (normal discard or damage cards, dual lands etc.) are out of this range.

What is Noble Hierarch? A simple manadork.

What about Lotus cobra?
Anyway, they SAY mythics are special, but in case of reprint sets like MM they clearly use it to control prices. They bumped bob and goyf solely on the monetary value of the card so it would stay high. Hierarch wasnt reprinted when the returned core set mechanic was exalted so it wouldn't surprise me if they bumped it to mythic.

With this logic the set should have at least 30 Mythics, shouldn't it? They make MM exactly to help the market and bring other people into the format: Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant are very special cards, both because they're from the beginnings of the format and because they're very sought of from the fans, although not always as played as other Modern staples. If you see the other Mythics in MM, they all make sense: Vendilion Clique and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker are Legendary Creatures and both very flavourful and powerful ones, the two Swords were both obvious choices, Vedalken Shackles is both incredibly powerful and oppressive in Limited...

Lotus Cobra can give you 2 mana in a single turn with Fetchlands and still be able to attack or block (no TAP for him!): I can clearly see why he was Mythic in ZEN, a set with cards like Harrow and Khalni Heart Expedition at common.

I think there's some sentiment from Wizards that Lotus Cobra at Mythic was probably a mistake. They were experimenting at the time with making mythics that weren't all in the "planeswalker" or "huge ridiculous thing" category, but they kind of overshot in terms of making something too utility mythic. Lotus Cobra was definitely not Mythic for limited reasons at all, though. It was playable, because Zendikar was the ultimate 2-power 2-mana guy format, and you wanted as many of those as you could get, but it wasn't outstanding. It could easily have been uncommon without changing limited at all.

In EDH, cards you remove with spot removal very frequently represent more than one card anyway. Swordsing a Consecrated Sphinx now instead of wrathing when your turn comes around isn't a one-for-one. It's a lots-for-one, and while it'd be better if someone else paid the 'for one', someone has to do it. I play in a only moderately competitive meta, but if you can't interact at instant speed for less than seven mana, you're usually going to have issues. (An exception might be is if your deck is otherwise sufficiently controlling that people can't ever cast must-answer threats to begin with, but that's not a realistic option for a lot of decks.)

It's a very important lesson, when transitioning to multiplayer formats, that spot removal is much worse in those formats and you're going to be in a lot of trouble if you try to play a deck that looks like a classic duel control deck in multiplayer. "A bunch of cards like terror, a bunch of cards like counterspell, some draw spells, and a few win conditions" is a much worse deck in a format with more than two players. That's something that gets drilled into people moving into multiplayer formats, because it's not totally obvious. (At least, it wasn't totally obvious to me; it's probably not something I would have thought about until I got a bunch of games under my belt.) At the same time, it's easy to go too overboard with abstract theory analyses of whether a card is good, and ignore pragmatics. Are there enough scenarios where I'm better off after playing Swords to Plowshares than I was before it that Swords to Plowshares is a good card? Absolutely. You don't win the game by heroically maintaining card advantage in some limited sense of the term while someone combos out with Deadeye Navigator across the table.

The following things can all be true at the same time (and are all true):
- Spot removal is relatively worse in multiplayer formats, especially ones like EDH where card advantage dominates tempo to a greater degree than normal. (Mostly because of the extra life.)
- A deck that tries to one-for-one everything like a control deck you'd play in constructed is relatively much worse in multiplayer.
- It's good to look for answers that fill some of the roles that spot removal does but that aren't card disadvantage.
- Spot removal - especially at instant speed - is very important in many typical EDH metagames for dealing with things that will allow their controller to accrue tremendous advantage if they're not dealt with.

I have a token-focused monowhite deck that I've tried a number of different legendary creatures as the general of (by default, it's a Darien deck), and Brimaz really just doesn't do enough to justify the commander slot. It's nice that it can be played so early, but realistically it makes one token a turn, and that's just not a usefully large rate of token production to serve as a meaningful threat or as meaningful engine fuel. (It's my feeling that the best way for mono-white token decks to compete is to think of tokens they produce not just as things to hit people with, but as a resource to be exchanged for cards or mana, through artifacts.) He also does a decent job of keeping early aggression pointed elsewhere, but that's not a real high-value effect, at least in my meta.

I like tokens a lot more than OP seems to, and I still don't think that Brimaz is a general that's strong enough to call attention to. A general supporting a token strategy should do one of a few things in my opinion:
- Produce enough tokens on its own that you can use it as one of your deck's major token generators (Darien)
- Either increase the power of tokens you produce (Elesh Norn, Jazal), be really good when you have a bunch of creatures in play (Odric, Jazal again), or otherwise use tokens as a resource (Mono-white doesn't really have any of these, but Vish Kal is an example.)
- Be generally really good in some other way, so good that it's okay that the general isn't really doing much with the rest of the deck.

Brimaz just doesn't make a difference enough of the times I cast him. I realize that it isn't reasonable to judge generals only on a best-case scenario, but the best-case scenario for Brimaz isn't very impressive. Hitting people and making a token isn't an EDH-scaled effect. Similarly, it's not fair to only consider worst-case scenarios, but Brimaz does nothing when you play him (except be an efficient blocker) without some help, and doesn't protect himself. White has other good (by mono-white standards) generals that do nothing when you play them without some help and don't protect themselves - Mangara, Lin Sivvi, Odric - but those creatures all have far better upsides if you untap with them (or give them haste) than just making a 1/1 token with vigilance.

The RC definitely considers how much good a card is doing when considering bans, not just how much harm it's doing. That was cited in the banning of Erayo; nobody really was doing anything with Erayo except for Erayo-locking people, so the cost of the ban was low. I think that that buys Derevi a lot of rope; I'd hazard that, globally, the vast majority of Derevi decks are not razor-tuned versions of the soul-crushing denial build that everyone hates. That's doubly true when you factor out the fringe competitive edges of EDH (where things like Hermit Druid and Ad Nauseum decks live) that the RC doesn't really even bother catering to. There are piles of fun and fair things that Derevi invites you to do, and in most decks Derevi hitting the field is not a big deal. With a creature like Griselbrand, you have to go way out of your way to build a deck that doesn't make Griselbrand completely nuts. With Derevi, you have to go way out of your way - and play in a way that's already heavily social-contract-discouraged - to make Derevi just lousy to play against.

Quote from Bolas, the Mindsculptor »

This decision may throw a curve ball at WotC... I believe Commander 2015 is finished and sent to the printers... If we get tuck cards I'm sure many will be up in arms over the rule.

But I do agree that if WotC had taken over EDH, they will have acted much much earlier. The main differences are time and (data) sources, both the RC fundamentally lacks.

The RC is in regular communication with Wizards about the things they're considering doing with the format and vice versa. People seem to be operating under the assumption that the rules committee woke up two days ago and just decided to make tuck effects work like everything else out of nowhere. This is an idea that has been floating around forever - since long before Wizards had any formal stake in the format, since long before the recent spate of tuck cards were printed, and even since before the vast majority of the generals that people list as impossible-to-deal-with were printed. That doesn't mean that the RC has been continuously debating the idea for that long, but I have to imagine that it's at least been on their radar. They know better than to blindside WotC with rules changes.

I hope that if the decks are 3+ colors, that one of the decks is a morph deck. I dislike that the only morph lord is mono-U, and while I know it's possible to make a morph deck that does not tie directly into whoever you choose for the commander, I'd like it if that was an option, at least.

Quote from Elvish Sniper »

Has the RC ever said "We tried something, we dun goofed, we're putting it back the way it was." before? That's basically what I'm hoping for now.

They've reversed banning decisions, but those were more "the format has evolved and the environment is different and we don't believe that if this card was unbanned that it would stick out as much as it did when it was originally banned" than "the decision to ban this card was wrong and we were wrong to make it." Pretty much every actual rules change was one that either people eventually generally came around on (color identity vs. whatever you want to call the old flavor-fail system where Memnarch refuses to play himself), one that some people still dislike but ultimately didn't make that much of a difference (the consolidated banlist), or one that people were basically on board with (various tweaks to identifying general cards when they're in zones where they're hidden.) There's never been a case where they reverted a decision solely due to community outcry.

I can't access the forums, but if a general is put into the command zone instead of being tucked, does that increase the general tax like if it died, or does it just go back there and the tax stays the same as what it was before? It's not a big deal either way, since I imagine that relatively few tuck spells will still see heavy play after this (Chaos Warp excepted, perhaps), but I'm curious.

Unless you're sharking it with players who are building much less competitive decks than you (in which case you're probably not going to get to play very long), there's no such thing as a deck that "inevitably wins" or even comes close to that. If you and the three other people you play with most are all trying to build decks that "inevitably win," you can't ALL have near-100% win rates. You can't ALL have decks that require god hands to beat, because the average win rate is still only going to be 25%. When you cut through the semantics, all "do you build decks that inevitably win" means is "do you build decks that are wildly, wildly out-of-band with the rest of your playgroup." If somebody's deck wins nearly every time, that's not a deckbuilding style choice, that's just being a very poor fit for the rest of the playgroup.

In addition to what other people have said about the "Sorry, you lose for playing that color" hosers, the other thing that I think is kind of not cool is, when playing with a group of people playing the same set of decks over multiple games, you don't get to throw a bunch of hosers into your deck between games. It's one thing to maindeck Karma or whatever, accepting that it has a certain average value in your meta. It's another thing to swap it in and out game-to-game based on what decks of theirs other people want to play. That goes for hosers in general, not just color hosers. It's unsporting, and it potentially leads to really unhealthy escalation.

Quote from Galspanic »

Quote from Chocopuppet »

I'm furious that we don't get a new blue legend. Every other color got one. I was counting on Taigam. He's referenced in several cardnames and flavor text and would be a perfect fit for the hole Narset left when she became a planeswalker.

You did. His ass is tied around Silumgar's neck. It would make less sense - in terms of cycles - to print a guy we didn't know about from previous cards.

That's Tasigur around Silumgar's neck, not Taigam. Taigam is the guy in Taigam's Scheming. We do find out what happened to him, though, through Taigam's Strike - instead of leaving the Jeskai for the Sultai like he did in the original timeline, he stayed with that faction. He didn't get a legendary creature card in DTK because the cycle is "original timeline Khans" not "just any five people from the original timeline, whatever."

Quote from TigerDriver91 »

I know it's been discussed somewhat, but do people think Shaman of Forgotten Ways will get banned?

They've said not to expect that, and that's reasonable. The shaman is meaningfully more difficult to pull off than Biorhythm is. It needs six other power worth of creatures around and either haste (and 14 mana total on one turn) or a way to survive a turn cycle. It also costs more than Biorhythm to activate. EDH has a ton of combos that win you the game if you have a couple of cards and eleven mana, and that effect doesn't even always win you the game.

Quote from Lonk »

I was thinking some something with a tap ability, like an Adarkar Valkyrie or some other creature with an activated ability. But you're right, even that seems bad/overly contrived. Why is this rare? I feel like it should've been uncommon.

Sometimes cards are rare precisely because they are of non-obvious or only offbeat utility. If you look at a card and say "wait, what is this even for?" than it's not the kind of card they want to be too many people's first card they see. It's a weird Johnny thing that isn't doing anything particularly important in limited. Rare is where those often go.

I'd want to add Green to Ixidor. I'm really hoping that they somehow squeeze in some king of face-down-creature legend that's at least blue and green this set, although it's looking like a longshot.