I'm convinced that Wizards is increasingly unlikely to consider a Preordain unban. Between the Ad Naus win, the insane spike of ban mania around Cheeri0s, performances by decks like Grixis Delver and Storm, and historical fears of blue-based combo, Preordain is looking very unlikely. JTMS, however, is looking safer and safer by the day. When I read the JTMS objections, all I see are the same objections to Sword and AV that we saw a year ago. This format is so powerful that it is unreasonable to believe JTMS in blue is any more powerful than all the other top-tier synergies and strategies. JTMS will certainly pass the Wizards unbanning test of a few MTGO trials plus gut instinct.
If indeed blue is going to get help from Wizards, which it still badly needs, the most likely unban (but not the best) is still JTMS.
Restricting information will never have the desired effect that people pushing for it think it will. People will still be able to get decklists from SCG/GPs/etc. , so the people who are inclined to just copy will still just copy. However, it's harder for people who want to attack the meta to do so effectively with less information, which usually means that a meta stays "solved" instead.
Spire of Industry may replace Glimmervoid in Affinity, but I overall think that is healthier for the format, with the less swingy-nature of Spire at least letting Affinity players interact against a lot of hate.
I know right now that Affinity makes up a smaller part of the field than it has historically, but it seems like at the time they were designing the set that they were fine with making Affinity less susceptible to hate. I guess they might have hoped that the protection comes at a cost of a few points of life here and there.
As terrible as it is when stacked up against all Shatter effects in the history of Magic, Destructive Tampering (Lets you choose between destroying an artifact or Magmatic Chasm for 2R at sorcery) is a huge improvement for Red in standard, especially since it can be reused with Goblin Dark-Dwellers unlike Structural Distortion.
Wizards has shied away from the "targeting but not being able to resolve" type wording recently, but in this case the card wouldn't work if it didn't have it, because the revolt clause wouldn't be checked until after you selected a legal target.
The goal of the original deck was to prey on GW Tokens and similar decks. It ate apart Gideons and Nissas since most of the creatures had Menace or Flying, there was lots of incidental damage from Prodder, Draconic Roar, Thunderbreak Regent pings, etc. It also had some incidental good match ups against other decks. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it.
A few days ago, I decided to actually update the deck for the new standard to see what a new version would look like. The loss of DTK has really hit the deck hard, but I still think that there's some potential in the GDD/Sin Prodder type midrange deck. Here's the first pass at the list:
Card Choices:
CREATURES
1. Sin Prodder : This is a card advantage engine that I think is very underrated. When combined with both the sorcery/instant recursion of GDD and the creature recursion that the old deck had, your opponent either gives you a card now or takes damage and gives you a card later. Besides that, it's a nice little attacker.
2. Goblin Dark-Dwellers : This is one of the big payoffs of the deck. All of the spells in this deck are 3 CMC or less to take advantage of the free flashback. Usually this comes down with a kill spell, a Transgress, or just plain old card draw attached to it. On top of that, a 4/4 Menace creature is surprisingly big.
3. Bearer of Silence : Bearer is great for quick aggressive starts and is actually a great answer to the biggest creatures like Ulamog. This is sometimes the only way to get under a deck with cheap Planeswalkers when you are on the draw.
4. Combustible Gearhulk : This is sort of the big beater to replace Kolaghan. Its ETB fits in well with the Sin Prodder approach. While this deck doesn't on average have a high ceiling for the damage effect, it's just another incidental source of damage.
5. Bedlam Reveler : There wasn't a real replacement for Thunderbreak Regents, so instead I went more for the card advantage route. This card often will cost 4 mana or less when you topdeck it. There's a little push and pull when you GDD a card away to make this more expensive, but usually the tempo gain is worth delaying this a turn.
6. Olivia, Mobilized for War I'm still trying this card out. It's a flying threat and there have been games where it takes over pretty fast, especially in games when Fiery Temper comes out of the board. There's also just more situations where your discard is value, even if you aren't using madness. There was a consideration of using Bloodhall Priest , but usually your hand isn't empty often enough to get the effect and there are no other madness enablers unless you have a really cheap Reveler or a saved Brutality.
SPELLS: This deck got more spell dense, partially because it lost some of the other creatures that it had without good replacements, and also because I often found myself boarding in Transgress most of the time in the old deck anyway.
1. Galvanic Bombardment , Collective Defiance , Unlicensed Disintegration : These are your meat and potatoes removal. Disintegration is actually easier to cast in this deck than Murder which is why it gets the nod, even if it only occasionally will get the 3 bonus damage. Collective Defiance plays a sad, but still passable impression of Draconic Roar and Galvanic Bombardment is a sometimes-worse, somtimes-better Fiery Temper.
2. Transgress the Mind , Collective Brutality : This is just standard black hand disruption. Brutality doubles well as removal when necessary. It does miss a lot, however.
3. Expedite , Fortuitous Find , Ruinous Path , Succumb to Temptation : These are just one-of utility cards. Usually Expedite is cycled on an early enemy creature to be later flashbacked for a hasty GDD. Succumb replaces the one-of Read the Bones in the old list. Without K-Command, Fortuitous Find is the only good source of creature recursion, but it can recur two at a time, which makes discarding a Gearhulk less punishing.
LANDS:
1. Drownyard Temple This is the only land really worth talking about, as the deck just plays the full complement of rare dual BR lands. Foundry of the Consuls needs some replacement to activate Bearer's ability and of all the colorless lands, this one had the best upside, since you can often dump one in the yard for value.
Now the sideboard is sort of a big shrug. There's more tuned removal depending on what you are facing up against, and some more hand/deck disruption cards for decks with limited win conditions. Dragonmaster Outcast was better when you could recur it for cheap, but it's still a great engine against decks without much removal that you can drop along side another threat. The only good sweeper is Radiant Flames, although you only will ever get it with 2 colors, so it is not a great replacement for Languish.
Ruinous Gremlin is an odd choice, I'll admit. I'm not sold on it, but there is no cheaper artifact in these colors. I'm testing it rather than Structural Distortion. The pros of Gremlin are that you can activate the ability at instant speed and there is a sort of installment plan aspect. The downsides are that it's not usually the case that you can drop it and wait for later, usually an activation of e.g. Marvel is all it takes, and any deck recurring artifacts just gets them right back versus the exile and 2 damage attached to Distortion.
I took this deck into the practice rooms on MTGO for maybe 10 or so matches. My thoughts so far:
1. The deck doesn't really have enough to bring in against creatureless decks. This isn't a huge issue, but it is something I noticed.
2. This deck struggles to beat artifacts. I never thought I'd be saying that about a deck with red in it, but Lost Legacy missing them and Gremlin being the best non-creature removal option means that it feels very rough against Marvel/Aetherhub/etc. decks.
3. Otherwise the deck did pretty well. It beat UW Flash but never matched up against GB Delirium.
I'd be interested in thoughts/comments on the deck. I'm going to try to more actively tune it in a few days when I get the chance and see whether some changes will make it play out better.
Are you really getting any benefit out of using Tibalt instead of a 3 mana walker? Unless you ramp on turn 2, you are going to want to go Turn 2 This, Turn 3 Planeswalker, so the 1 mana cost reduction isn't as necessary.
One thing that always irks me when MARO writes is how he mentions market research like the research is public knowledge.
Also i really dont want to buy a set based off market research. I want a set made by creative inspired individuals who can think outside the focus group.
I think this is just complaining for the sake of complaining. Market research makes sets better and has little to do with stifling creativity. Is Egypt World less fun if they reveal that it tested well instead of someone naturally deciding to do it?
I think you're viewing it too much as "Market research means someone comes and says you must have X mechanics, and creatures must be this big, etc." when it's usually more like "Wow, people hated this mechanic. Maybe we should try to do a different thing they like more." or "Design isn't the place for us to be self indulgent just to show we can do something."
Don't forget that with sovereign realm you have to play all but two of the cards you draft. A draft only contains 42 picks, and you still have to have a legal deck of 40 cards. So the sovereign deck will be playing all of the 10-14th picks too. And it starts 2 cards down.
Aside from automatically ramping you, it also allows a greater threat density by letting you play sligtly less lands then you would have otherwise.
And I believe the lack of sweepers actually makes the 1v1 removal more valuable, and as such will only be spent on the bombs, not some medium-sized creature.
45 picks, because there are no basic lands in the packs (it's where the draft matters cards go), but that only slightly changes your point.
life gain and loss are easy, just add or substract the number of loyality counters to the pw.
As we just ruled they are players, so you can target a planeswalker with a drawspell. A player who has to draw but cant loses the game, in case of a planeswalker that should mean exile.
One could also argue, that a planeswalker´s ability equals their cards in hand, so discard could just eliminate one of their abilities.
Also, while i think its ok to have multiple copies of a planeswalker in your deck, you should not be able to play a second copy. After all, a player who is dead can´t come back to the game either.
milling cards could just be ignored.
And while you might disagree with my take on that, if you do, please explain why - if planeswalker == player - planeswalker should be =/= player in the points i made.
Why are you saying planeswalker = player? Players are (or were) planeswalkers, but that isn't the same as a planeswalker being a player. After all, planeswalker cards don't take turns. They don't control the creatures they make. Etc.
Also, your suggested changes would make planeswalkers much more complicated and if implemented now would require a lot of them to be banned or be trivial to deal with. A card that gains 5 life is usually not worth it, but one that adds 5 loyalty to a planeswalker would be insane. Any effect that has all players draw a card also has "Kill all planeswalkers" attached to it?
Why do people think the redirection rule is inelegant? When you're actually playing the game, it works out very elegantly. The only real unintuitive thing is when a player has hexproof, but that isn't any less intuitive than a number of other interactions between pairs of cards.
If nobody is buying on the secondary market, nobody will open the packs, so the store won't sell them, so the distributor won't order them... You can't arbitrarily decide to put a wall up in that chain and say that everything to the right is support and everything to the left is not. If the packs sale are support, despite the money from them not directly going to WotC at all, how is the secondary sale, which gives WotC the same amount of direct money, not?
Because a pack can only be purchased once, while a card can be sold on the secondary market countless times.
In other cases, you have examples where expensive cards don't actually lead to an increase in the number of packs sold because the EV of the box is too low. People didn't go out to the store to buy packs to get a foil Jace, VP, because the chances are extremely low. The supply mostly comes from limited players and people who open packs for the sake of opening packs, two groups that don't have as elastic of demand (outside of cases like KTK where everyone wanted to get some fetchlands).
Guys, the Justice League/ Avengers/ League of Extraordinary Gentlemen/etc. idea is not unique to DC Comics. No one is going to "sue" WotC over this.
I understand why MaRo would get annoyed at the phrase. He's a very empathetic person who isn't even on the creative team. People using the "Jacetus league" in derogatory ways towards him is perceived as attacking his coworkers.
1) Devoid can become an icon.
2) Regenerate can become an icon.
3) "When Birthing Hulk enters the battlefield" can become an icon.
4) "put two 1/1 colorless Eldrazi Scion creature tokens onto the battlefield. They have "Sacrifice this creature: Add Colorless to your mana pool." can be shortened to:
"[2] Token (Creature - Eldrazi Scion - 1/1 - Sacrifice: add <> to your mana pool)"
The basic idea is that keywords and major concepts like ETB can become icons and where it isn't absolutely necessary for a card to refer to itself, it can be omitted. ETB's are one such area. When a card ETB's it is obvious what card is ETB'ing, no need to refer to the card name. When a card can only Regenerate itself, again no need to refer to it by name. As to #4 above, it should be possible to remove words where the meaning can be implied. "Sacrifice this creature" can be reduced to "Sacrifice". "creature" is redundant because it doesn't matter to the ability that the card is a creature. "this" is also redundant because if not referring specifically to some other card, the only thing that can be sacrificed is the card itself.
Icons fall under the same problem as the "remember all of the different tokens" problem. As another game example, I played a miniature game called Hero Clix that my friend had and everything was represented by icons. We had to look them all up on the internet as we played, which made the game much harder to play.
In addition, your suggestions of shorthand for different things makes the card look a lot clunkier than the current. Also, people already have enough trouble with the rules as is ("Can this sacrifice itself?", etc.) already, so I think replacing "Sacrifice this creature" with "Sacrifice" would confuse people more.
Restricting information will never have the desired effect that people pushing for it think it will. People will still be able to get decklists from SCG/GPs/etc. , so the people who are inclined to just copy will still just copy. However, it's harder for people who want to attack the meta to do so effectively with less information, which usually means that a meta stays "solved" instead.
Spire of Industry may replace Glimmervoid in Affinity, but I overall think that is healthier for the format, with the less swingy-nature of Spire at least letting Affinity players interact against a lot of hate.
I know right now that Affinity makes up a smaller part of the field than it has historically, but it seems like at the time they were designing the set that they were fine with making Affinity less susceptible to hate. I guess they might have hoped that the protection comes at a cost of a few points of life here and there.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/aiming-modern-2017-01-20
The goal of the original deck was to prey on GW Tokens and similar decks. It ate apart Gideons and Nissas since most of the creatures had Menace or Flying, there was lots of incidental damage from Prodder, Draconic Roar, Thunderbreak Regent pings, etc. It also had some incidental good match ups against other decks. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it.
A few days ago, I decided to actually update the deck for the new standard to see what a new version would look like. The loss of DTK has really hit the deck hard, but I still think that there's some potential in the GDD/Sin Prodder type midrange deck. Here's the first pass at the list:
3 Bearer of Silence
4 Sin Prodder
1 Olivia, Mobilized for War
4 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
2 Combustible Gearhulk
2 Bedlam Reveler
1 Expedite
3 Galvanic Bombardment
3 Transgress the Mind
2 Collective Brutality
2 Collective Defiance
1 Succumb to Temptation
1 Fortuitous Find
1 Ruinous Path
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
4 Foreboding Ruins
4 Smoldering Marsh
4 Drownyard Temple
6 Swamp
8 Mountain
With the current thrown together sideboard:
1 Dragonmaster Outcast
1 Galvanic Bombardment
2 Harsh Scrutiny
2 Lost Legacy
1 Murder
2 Ruinous Gremlin
2 Tears of Valakut
2 Radiant Flames
2 Fiery Temper
Card Choices:
CREATURES
1. Sin Prodder : This is a card advantage engine that I think is very underrated. When combined with both the sorcery/instant recursion of GDD and the creature recursion that the old deck had, your opponent either gives you a card now or takes damage and gives you a card later. Besides that, it's a nice little attacker.
2. Goblin Dark-Dwellers : This is one of the big payoffs of the deck. All of the spells in this deck are 3 CMC or less to take advantage of the free flashback. Usually this comes down with a kill spell, a Transgress, or just plain old card draw attached to it. On top of that, a 4/4 Menace creature is surprisingly big.
3. Bearer of Silence : Bearer is great for quick aggressive starts and is actually a great answer to the biggest creatures like Ulamog. This is sometimes the only way to get under a deck with cheap Planeswalkers when you are on the draw.
4. Combustible Gearhulk : This is sort of the big beater to replace Kolaghan. Its ETB fits in well with the Sin Prodder approach. While this deck doesn't on average have a high ceiling for the damage effect, it's just another incidental source of damage.
5. Bedlam Reveler : There wasn't a real replacement for Thunderbreak Regents, so instead I went more for the card advantage route. This card often will cost 4 mana or less when you topdeck it. There's a little push and pull when you GDD a card away to make this more expensive, but usually the tempo gain is worth delaying this a turn.
6. Olivia, Mobilized for War I'm still trying this card out. It's a flying threat and there have been games where it takes over pretty fast, especially in games when Fiery Temper comes out of the board. There's also just more situations where your discard is value, even if you aren't using madness. There was a consideration of using Bloodhall Priest , but usually your hand isn't empty often enough to get the effect and there are no other madness enablers unless you have a really cheap Reveler or a saved Brutality.
SPELLS: This deck got more spell dense, partially because it lost some of the other creatures that it had without good replacements, and also because I often found myself boarding in Transgress most of the time in the old deck anyway.
1. Galvanic Bombardment , Collective Defiance , Unlicensed Disintegration : These are your meat and potatoes removal. Disintegration is actually easier to cast in this deck than Murder which is why it gets the nod, even if it only occasionally will get the 3 bonus damage. Collective Defiance plays a sad, but still passable impression of Draconic Roar and Galvanic Bombardment is a sometimes-worse, somtimes-better Fiery Temper.
2. Transgress the Mind , Collective Brutality : This is just standard black hand disruption. Brutality doubles well as removal when necessary. It does miss a lot, however.
3. Expedite , Fortuitous Find , Ruinous Path , Succumb to Temptation : These are just one-of utility cards. Usually Expedite is cycled on an early enemy creature to be later flashbacked for a hasty GDD. Succumb replaces the one-of Read the Bones in the old list. Without K-Command, Fortuitous Find is the only good source of creature recursion, but it can recur two at a time, which makes discarding a Gearhulk less punishing.
LANDS:
1. Drownyard Temple This is the only land really worth talking about, as the deck just plays the full complement of rare dual BR lands. Foundry of the Consuls needs some replacement to activate Bearer's ability and of all the colorless lands, this one had the best upside, since you can often dump one in the yard for value.
Now the sideboard is sort of a big shrug. There's more tuned removal depending on what you are facing up against, and some more hand/deck disruption cards for decks with limited win conditions. Dragonmaster Outcast was better when you could recur it for cheap, but it's still a great engine against decks without much removal that you can drop along side another threat. The only good sweeper is Radiant Flames, although you only will ever get it with 2 colors, so it is not a great replacement for Languish.
Ruinous Gremlin is an odd choice, I'll admit. I'm not sold on it, but there is no cheaper artifact in these colors. I'm testing it rather than Structural Distortion. The pros of Gremlin are that you can activate the ability at instant speed and there is a sort of installment plan aspect. The downsides are that it's not usually the case that you can drop it and wait for later, usually an activation of e.g. Marvel is all it takes, and any deck recurring artifacts just gets them right back versus the exile and 2 damage attached to Distortion.
I took this deck into the practice rooms on MTGO for maybe 10 or so matches. My thoughts so far:
1. The deck doesn't really have enough to bring in against creatureless decks. This isn't a huge issue, but it is something I noticed.
2. This deck struggles to beat artifacts. I never thought I'd be saying that about a deck with red in it, but Lost Legacy missing them and Gremlin being the best non-creature removal option means that it feels very rough against Marvel/Aetherhub/etc. decks.
3. Otherwise the deck did pretty well. It beat UW Flash but never matched up against GB Delirium.
I'd be interested in thoughts/comments on the deck. I'm going to try to more actively tune it in a few days when I get the chance and see whether some changes will make it play out better.
Are you really getting any benefit out of using Tibalt instead of a 3 mana walker? Unless you ramp on turn 2, you are going to want to go Turn 2 This, Turn 3 Planeswalker, so the 1 mana cost reduction isn't as necessary.
Only if you're going to say that "There exists cards with this function" counts as a set mechanic.
Landfall wasn't a mechanic in SOI even if Tireless Tracker had a similar effect.
I think this is just complaining for the sake of complaining. Market research makes sets better and has little to do with stifling creativity. Is Egypt World less fun if they reveal that it tested well instead of someone naturally deciding to do it?
I think you're viewing it too much as "Market research means someone comes and says you must have X mechanics, and creatures must be this big, etc." when it's usually more like "Wow, people hated this mechanic. Maybe we should try to do a different thing they like more." or "Design isn't the place for us to be self indulgent just to show we can do something."
45 picks, because there are no basic lands in the packs (it's where the draft matters cards go), but that only slightly changes your point.
Why are you saying planeswalker = player? Players are (or were) planeswalkers, but that isn't the same as a planeswalker being a player. After all, planeswalker cards don't take turns. They don't control the creatures they make. Etc.
Also, your suggested changes would make planeswalkers much more complicated and if implemented now would require a lot of them to be banned or be trivial to deal with. A card that gains 5 life is usually not worth it, but one that adds 5 loyalty to a planeswalker would be insane. Any effect that has all players draw a card also has "Kill all planeswalkers" attached to it?
Because a pack can only be purchased once, while a card can be sold on the secondary market countless times.
In other cases, you have examples where expensive cards don't actually lead to an increase in the number of packs sold because the EV of the box is too low. People didn't go out to the store to buy packs to get a foil Jace, VP, because the chances are extremely low. The supply mostly comes from limited players and people who open packs for the sake of opening packs, two groups that don't have as elastic of demand (outside of cases like KTK where everyone wanted to get some fetchlands).
I understand why MaRo would get annoyed at the phrase. He's a very empathetic person who isn't even on the creative team. People using the "Jacetus league" in derogatory ways towards him is perceived as attacking his coworkers.
Icons fall under the same problem as the "remember all of the different tokens" problem. As another game example, I played a miniature game called Hero Clix that my friend had and everything was represented by icons. We had to look them all up on the internet as we played, which made the game much harder to play.
In addition, your suggestions of shorthand for different things makes the card look a lot clunkier than the current. Also, people already have enough trouble with the rules as is ("Can this sacrifice itself?", etc.) already, so I think replacing "Sacrifice this creature" with "Sacrifice" would confuse people more.