MTG Salvation

Quote from Shorue »

Thanks for the input, the only reason that Hixus should work in this situation is that game state doesn't change if they move from damage to end of turn. The one Spike is quite well known for trying to rush or wait out steps in our local meta to gain an advantage. He has done things like casting two creatures at once or trying to bait a counter or kill by giving tons of time to make a play before moving steps or passing priority.

Quote from SephX »

Not tucking Uril is like watching a Solitaire game. Go play against a Kaalia deck with no tucks, please. Tell me you're meaningfully interacting. You really have it backwards.

Quote from Sorin-Markov »

Reality Shift seems wrong... I mean, I dont like blue doing this kind of stuff.

Quote from Igzex »

Oh neat, another random boardwipe for my Sliver Hivelord voltron in development.

Quote from Varyag »

In my area, there are two things that keep modern from growing. One is price and the other is the ban-hammer. We had 3 delver players and 3 pod players and they got hated out of the game overnight and now want nothing to do with the format. When you have ~15 players this is an issue.

As for price, at this point everyone has said their piece, but ultimately its out of our hands. Whatever trend MM2 starts is probably exactly what to expect of MM3, 4 etc. I don't know how representative Tarmogoyf is as its been painted as a chase card and something special. I'm much more interested to see how the price of Karn Liberated behaves. At the moment he's at an unrealistic 40$ for a card used only in a single deck that sits at 2.29% of the meta.

Quote from Phil Bowles »

Possible, and fun to try, but Battlefield Thaumaturge combines well with a lot of cards and hasn't yet really broken into Standard - I actually think the right decks are likely benefit more from the Icy Blast-for-U combo than this (but feel free to stick both in the same deck).

Quote from Dr. Death »

I'm not saying that the cards are as a whole are unplayable. I'm complaining that this is a set with dragons in it, instead of a dragon set. All of the dragons fulfill the classic dragon role: big timmy bomb. From a design standpoint, I'd think the set needed to have playable dragons in formats other than limited. At 6CMC, they are incredibly limited because decks just don't room for a ton of late game cards; at best one will be good enough to play in standard at the rest will make for interesting limited matches. If we had 1-3CMC dragons and interesting EDH commanders I think the set would present its theme in a much better way. Instead the ex-Khan cycle, the cheap commands, and the pushed GW cards are going to define the set.

Attitudes like this are irritating to me. We have more dragons than any set to date, cards that care about dragons, cards that are about draconic activities and qualities, a cycle of elder dragons, dragon lords, dragon cost reduction, dragon tutor, dragon totems, and creatures, spells, and planeswalkers that make dragon tokens. The mythic dragons have attributes that allow the to fit into different styles of decks. The commands are commands given by the elder dragons.

This set is legitimately the most dragoniest dragon set that has ever been printed, but you
still complain because there aren't any super cheap dragons.

What if monastery mentor was called tiny broodmother and was a 2/2 without flying that made 1/1s with flying instead of prowess? How do you make a 1/1 or a 2/3 feel like a dragon? You would have far more complaints about the dragons in the set not really being dragons if they went about it your way. Complaining that the set is just a set with dragons is so ridiculous, I'm unsure your specific dragon desires can be sated in a reasonable fashion.

Also, the mythic is just Ghastly Conscription number 2. Lame.

Quote from Manbearscientist »

My issue with this set is that they have wasted the creative design space of a dragon set by making the namesakes of set weak and bland. Starting from the Dragonlord's themselves, you have expensive legendaries that clearly weren't designed with standard but are also crappy EDH commanders. The design of those cards seems to be pure flavor, with absolutely no intent to push the cards towards seeing play in any format.

Then you have the other cycles, of which only ONE dragon so far is even playable (Thunderbeak Regent). The rare monocolor cycle is sort of alright but is just way too expensive except for red's 2RR dragon. The rest are limited fodder just because they are 5+ mana with no protection or instant impact (outside of Deathbringer Regent, which is so expensive the board wipe isn't worth it). Then you have the uncommon megamorph cycle, which is a crappy as feasibly possible. The rare cycle of multi-color dragons is again too expensive. The uncommons multi-color cards are more interesting, but again too expensive.

There are cards in this set that will see Modern and even legacy play. But the vast majority of the design seems to have been focused on making a limited format with a diverse set of bombs. It could have done that and still have make playable dragons for standard, low cost dragons for tribal decks (pauper/edh/casual), and interesting EDH commanders. It is a shame that in a set named after Dragons will be defined almost exclusively by the non-Dragon cards that could have been printed in any set. I think that this set is a massive design failure as a whole, even though the individual card power levels are fine.