Pushing EDH much? Seems like confirmation that EDH might be a new sanctioned format
A couple of people have said this, and it's confusing me. I'm familiar with EDH/Commander, but not with foils being a big part of it. Is playing foils-only EDH a thing that people do?
I think this could be constructed quality. Ramp up to get this guy early, then Harrow and fetch to swing for a win. Going in my extended Scapeshift deck for sure.
Right now I've been playing around with an Extended deck that revolves around Vinelasher Kudzu and Battlewand Oak. While Scapeshift is the deck's best trick, I'm running plenty of fetchlands. And yeah, even with just two "Landfall" cards, the fetchlands are really awesome.
Do, DarkRitual, what do you think of MaRo's latest column?
As tempting as it is to say, "I told you so," I actually think it's closer to say that we were both right. I was right that the inception of the design was to make this the "land set," focusing first on land-based mechanics. But while I never thought there would be as many "land matters" cards in Zendikar as "multicolor matters" cards in Ravnica, I think your prediction is closer in terms of the set being more flavor-driven than some recent sets. Either this is a particular case of "land" not being deep enough theme to support a whole set, or WotC is moving more toward an even weight of mechanics and "resonant" flavor in its sets. I suspect it's the former, but only time will tell.
Everyone complaining about the 7 Plains (and the high casting costs for the Planeswalkers, and so on) is forgetting that this set is shaping up to have a ton of land-playing effects. Instead of 7 plains taking 10+ turns, I bet a ZEN-heavy deck will be getting there in five turns. If they'd made it any less, it would have been too good for Soldiers decks that are going to be brutal ocne ZEN's out.
I think Landfall, and all the land-matters stuff, could already count as mana "behaving differently." I hope there's more to it than that, but that might be sufficient explanation for that statement in the novel.
I agree with metallix87 think we're getting a new mana subtype sooner or later, because MaRo has occasionally hinted that he thought Snow mana was a great idea with only okay execution. But he hasn't hinted about it lately, and I think we'd have some sense of it by now if it were going to be part of Zendikar. So maybe that will be the theme for the next big set.
What's the point of this? through a bunch of soon to rorate Lorwyn 1-ofs and predict how landfall will work, not knowing exactly what cards will have it? This means nothing. We have to see the cards and test them in the same environment to know how well they will be.
The point was to have some fun and get a sense of how Landfall might feel in play. Obviously the bulk of this deck will rotate from Standard when ZEN rotates in, but it's also obvious that a deck like this will be much better when real Landfall cards rotate in.
My conclusion -- which I couldn't really evaluate before trying this -- is that Landfall will be a powerful mechanic. If most Landfall cards are balanced assuming 1 or 2 land drops a turn, you'll be able to get a lot for your CC by playing fetchlands, land search, and Fastbond-esque effects. I don't know how competitive Landfall will get, but it seems likely to make Warp World a real tournament contender. And most importantly, I think it's going to be a lot of fun, simply because it turns boring land drops into exciting benefits.
If the card is worded as spoiled, then it works the way Torgen said. Valakut would check its intervening "if" condition for each Mountain coming into play, see 5 Mountains, and trigger for every Mountain. So if you flipped Valakut and 7 Mountains, you would in fact get 21 total damage.
Geez, really? Because I'm definitely no rules expert, but it seems to me that you don't get to count yourself as "controlling" a mountain until it has entered the battlefield. It seems very counterintuitive to me that it would trigger before that sixth mountain, and it seems like WotC has been trying to make the rules more intuitive lately.
I believe you, I'm just confused as to you can "control" something that hasn't finished entering the battlefield yet.
With Zendikar seeming quite likely to be a "land matters" set, I decided to take that theme for a spin. For the past few days, I've been playing the following deck in casual games on MTGO, which uses some of the (very few) Landfall-esque abilities currently in Standard:
It shouldn't shock you that competitively speaking, this deck is not very good. I restricted myself to cards I had (or rares I could get for under $0.50), and I intentionally avoided good cards (like Overrun) that had nothing to do with the theme. But I won a fair portion of the random Casual Room games I played, and I had a lot of fun doing it.
Here's a look at how the deck played, card-by-card:
Battlewand Oak was really the inspiration for this, as it essentially has "Forestfall." The rest of the deck was my attempt to find ways to feed him Forests. When this deck won, a huge Battlewand Oak was almost always the reason.
The second card I decided to put in this deck was Knight of the Reliquary, and she did pretty well. I fed her fetch-lands, and sometimes used her to pump my Battlewand for a couple of turns to build her up.
Terramorphic Expanse was great in this, and would be even better in a real Landfall deck. The Naya Panoramas were okay, but definitely less efficient.
Bramblewood Paragon probably seems out of place here, but it was actually critical as good 2-drop and a reliable way to give Trample to my all-important Battlewand Oaks.
Rampant Growth was the best land-grabbing Sorcery I could get in Standard. I'm hoping ZEN gives us something better.
Tilling Treefolk was a good card in this deck, as long as I kept it from stepping on the Knight's toes. In most cases, my Expanses and Panoramas were back in the graveyard by the time it mattered to the Knight. Path to Exile was one of the few competitive cards in this deck. It's great removal, of course, but it also did double-duty as a last-ditch Forest-fetcher.
Reach of Branches is another Forestfall card, and a great way to pump up the Battlewand. Once I can afford the casting cost, I can typically cast it every turn.
Seedguide Ash seemed to have a lot of potential, but I never quite got it to matter. The trick is getting it killed before the Battlewand's damage is dealt, which never really happened.
Bosk Banneret and Lignify were just here to help out the Treefolk subtheme I had going. Helpful cards in this deck, but irrelevant to the whole land-matters playtest.
Timber Protector was handy here, but as a 1-of, I only got to him once.
Awakener Druid is definitely a land-matters card -- in fact, it strikes me as a futureshifted ZEN card. My thought was that this might actually be a way to feed Knight of the Reliquary -- turn my plentiful forests into expendable creatures. But the Druid himself is so fragile that I never got his Treefolk into deadly combat.
Valleymaker got in here because I was really desperate to find a way to sacrifice lands in Standard, to make my Knight bigger. But sacrificing one land at a time is too slow to be meaningful. If I'd had more red, [card]Goblin Razerunners[/b] would have been a much better choice.
Realm Razer is here for a silly reason: I wanted to set up a combo where I'd blink all of my Forests to make my Battlewand as huge as possible. And I somehow forgot about the existence of Scapeshift, which would have been a much more straightforward way to do this. I never pulled this off with Realm Razer, though one of the few times I played it, its appearance on the battlefield did prompt a concession!
[B]Thoughts[/B]
There's definitely something very fun about playing a deck where playing land is an exciting event. I was pretty much never disappointed to draw a land, even/especially during the late game, which counteracts one of the biggest typical complaints about Magic. If "land matters" turns out to Zendikar's theme, I think we can look forward to games where playing, sacrificing, destroying, and bouncing lands.
So that's my "landfall"/land-matters playtest report! Anyone else trying this? Any thoughts on what other Standard or Extended cards will work well in a "land matters" environment?
I'm looking for advice on starting to play competitive Standard in MTGO. Skip this first section if you want...
Optional background info on me:
I'm a longtime Magic player, but long distance and adult-life logistics keep me far away from the friends who I played with when I was younger. So for the past few years, I've been enjoying Magic Online. The problem was, I kept trying for a way to recreate the "casual" experience, and was never really satisfied with it. It's simply too hard to find other players whose concept of "casual" matches mine, and whose card pools are comparable.
I recently started playing Pauper, and I've really enjoyed it. For the first time ever, I don't feel dirty for playing counterspells or land destruction or discard effects, because it's such an even playing field. I'm enjoying the competitive thrill of simply constructing a better deck than an opponent trying to do the same.
The problem is, I don't really know where to start in Standard. There's such a wide variety of decks in the Casual room that I don't know if I'm winning because my deck is good or because my opponent is bad. I made one attempt to netdeck (copying this Anathemancer deck almost exactly) and played in the Tournament Practice room, but I did horribly.
The part where I ask for advice:
What is the most foolproof deck that I can build that doesn't rely too heavily on Lorwyn/Shadowmoor cards that are about to rotate out of Standard? Ideally, I'd prefer not to spend a ton of money. But I'd spend up to $40 to make a decent deck.
After the Tournament Practice room, what's the first step I should take to dip my toe in the waters of competitive Constructed play?
Any wisdom you can pass along would be greatly appreciated!
Right, I'm just getting back into MTGO (after being out for around a year), and my strategy is to hold off on buying any Lorwyn/Shadowmoor cards. It's a shame, because I missed some great ones, but I'm just too far behind to catch up. Looking to drop quite a bit on Zendikar, though, so I hope it's a good set!
I think Zen's "land matters theme" will be more like the "Legends matter" theme from Kamigawa.
Your argument has been a little wishy-washy, but this is one point you're sticking to. And I'm saying it's still inaccurate.
For the past nine years, Magic has built each of its blocks around a marketable "big idea." Each big idea can typically be summed up in one or two words, and according to various articles by MaRo and others, that big idea serves as the starting point for all design and development.
Invasion block: multicolor
Odyssey block: graveyard
Onslaught block: tribal
Mirrodin block: artifacts
Kamigawa block: Japanese mythology
Ravnica block: multicolor (2-color pairs)
Time Spiral block: time
Lorwyn block: tribal
Shadowmoor: hybrid mana
Alara block: multicolor (3-color trios)
Of those big ideas, most are mechanical themes. Kamigawa's theme was top-down, flavor-driven design. Time Spiral's theme was top-down, though it led a bit more directly into "time matters" mechanics like suspend. But the point is that they were big ideas, not diluted by other concepts. I was wrong in my earlier post when I said Kamigawa wasn't entirely top-down design. As you can see from the very end of this article on Kamigawa design, the legendary subtheme was an afterthought.
So "what WotC does now" is make sets with clear themes. And we know that Zendikar's theme is not going to be a flavor-driven, top-down theme. This quote from Rosewater clearly states that the set was built around a design-based theme:
"There is a space in Magic design that we've explored on individual cards but have never explored thematically as a block theme. We started with that theme and then crafted a world that made it make sense."
So either "land matters" is the theme of the set, or it's a minor subtheme and some other theme is far more important. But based on its last 9 years of history, WotC is not going to release a set where the theme is "land matters... sort of." And unless they've been deliberately misleading us or the theme is a slight variation like "mana matters," there's no other theme that could match all the hints we've been given.
Worse, it's rare. It fits the 'epicness' of the card, but is that going to move Duals to Uncommon (a welcome surprise!) or preclude them from the set? Or worse, have 10+ lands at rare?
I'm a little disappointed that this card isn't uncommon, because I'd like to see even cooler stuff in the rares. But if land is the theme of this set, perhaps an unusual percentage of rare cards will be lands.
I suspect there will be some spin on dual lands, but I'd expect them to be based on interaction with other lands. Something like River of Tears or the fetch lands (neither of which are original ideas, I know).
A couple of people have said this, and it's confusing me. I'm familiar with EDH/Commander, but not with foils being a big part of it. Is playing foils-only EDH a thing that people do?
As tempting as it is to say, "I told you so," I actually think it's closer to say that we were both right. I was right that the inception of the design was to make this the "land set," focusing first on land-based mechanics. But while I never thought there would be as many "land matters" cards in Zendikar as "multicolor matters" cards in Ravnica, I think your prediction is closer in terms of the set being more flavor-driven than some recent sets. Either this is a particular case of "land" not being deep enough theme to support a whole set, or WotC is moving more toward an even weight of mechanics and "resonant" flavor in its sets. I suspect it's the former, but only time will tell.
I agree with metallix87 think we're getting a new mana subtype sooner or later, because MaRo has occasionally hinted that he thought Snow mana was a great idea with only okay execution. But he hasn't hinted about it lately, and I think we'd have some sense of it by now if it were going to be part of Zendikar. So maybe that will be the theme for the next big set.
The point was to have some fun and get a sense of how Landfall might feel in play. Obviously the bulk of this deck will rotate from Standard when ZEN rotates in, but it's also obvious that a deck like this will be much better when real Landfall cards rotate in.
My conclusion -- which I couldn't really evaluate before trying this -- is that Landfall will be a powerful mechanic. If most Landfall cards are balanced assuming 1 or 2 land drops a turn, you'll be able to get a lot for your CC by playing fetchlands, land search, and Fastbond-esque effects. I don't know how competitive Landfall will get, but it seems likely to make Warp World a real tournament contender. And most importantly, I think it's going to be a lot of fun, simply because it turns boring land drops into exciting benefits.
Geez, really? Because I'm definitely no rules expert, but it seems to me that you don't get to count yourself as "controlling" a mountain until it has entered the battlefield. It seems very counterintuitive to me that it would trigger before that sixth mountain, and it seems like WotC has been trying to make the rules more intuitive lately.
I believe you, I'm just confused as to you can "control" something that hasn't finished entering the battlefield yet.
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Bramblewood Paragon
2 Tilling Treefolk
2 Seedguide Ash
2 Bosk Banneret
1 Cloudcrown Oak
1 Unstoppable Ash
1 Sapling of Colfenor
1 Timber Protector
2 Awakener Druid
1 Valleymaker
2 Realm Razer
3 Path to Exile
2 Reach of Branches
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Naya Panorama
8 Forest
2 Mountain
5 Plains
It shouldn't shock you that competitively speaking, this deck is not very good. I restricted myself to cards I had (or rares I could get for under $0.50), and I intentionally avoided good cards (like Overrun) that had nothing to do with the theme. But I won a fair portion of the random Casual Room games I played, and I had a lot of fun doing it.
Here's a look at how the deck played, card-by-card:
Battlewand Oak was really the inspiration for this, as it essentially has "Forestfall." The rest of the deck was my attempt to find ways to feed him Forests. When this deck won, a huge Battlewand Oak was almost always the reason.
The second card I decided to put in this deck was Knight of the Reliquary, and she did pretty well. I fed her fetch-lands, and sometimes used her to pump my Battlewand for a couple of turns to build her up.
Terramorphic Expanse was great in this, and would be even better in a real Landfall deck. The Naya Panoramas were okay, but definitely less efficient.
Bramblewood Paragon probably seems out of place here, but it was actually critical as good 2-drop and a reliable way to give Trample to my all-important Battlewand Oaks.
Rampant Growth was the best land-grabbing Sorcery I could get in Standard. I'm hoping ZEN gives us something better.
Tilling Treefolk was a good card in this deck, as long as I kept it from stepping on the Knight's toes. In most cases, my Expanses and Panoramas were back in the graveyard by the time it mattered to the Knight.
Path to Exile was one of the few competitive cards in this deck. It's great removal, of course, but it also did double-duty as a last-ditch Forest-fetcher.
Reach of Branches is another Forestfall card, and a great way to pump up the Battlewand. Once I can afford the casting cost, I can typically cast it every turn.
Seedguide Ash seemed to have a lot of potential, but I never quite got it to matter. The trick is getting it killed before the Battlewand's damage is dealt, which never really happened.
Bosk Banneret and Lignify were just here to help out the Treefolk subtheme I had going. Helpful cards in this deck, but irrelevant to the whole land-matters playtest.
The same goes for Cloudcrown Oak, Unstoppable Ash and Sapling of Colfenor, except that they weren't especially helpful. If I did any optimizing, they'd be the first thing to go.
Timber Protector was handy here, but as a 1-of, I only got to him once.
Awakener Druid is definitely a land-matters card -- in fact, it strikes me as a futureshifted ZEN card. My thought was that this might actually be a way to feed Knight of the Reliquary -- turn my plentiful forests into expendable creatures. But the Druid himself is so fragile that I never got his Treefolk into deadly combat.
Valleymaker got in here because I was really desperate to find a way to sacrifice lands in Standard, to make my Knight bigger. But sacrificing one land at a time is too slow to be meaningful. If I'd had more red, [card]Goblin Razerunners[/b] would have been a much better choice.
Realm Razer is here for a silly reason: I wanted to set up a combo where I'd blink all of my Forests to make my Battlewand as huge as possible. And I somehow forgot about the existence of Scapeshift, which would have been a much more straightforward way to do this.
[B]Thoughts[/B]
There's definitely something very fun about playing a deck where playing land is an exciting event. I was pretty much never disappointed to draw a land, even/especially during the late game, which counteracts one of the biggest typical complaints about Magic. If "land matters" turns out to Zendikar's theme, I think we can look forward to games where playing, sacrificing, destroying, and bouncing lands.
Building this deck opened my eyes to some very cheap rares that could rise in value when ZEN comes out, like Knight of the Reliquary, Scapeshift, Realm Razer, and Goblin Razerunners.
As mediocre as this deck is from a competitive standpoint, I might actually try to flesh it out when ZEN is released. Opening it up to Extended would allow some fun new options like Vinelasher Kudzu (FTW!), Foratog, Seed the Land, Hunting Wilds, Kodama's Reach, and maybe even Baru, Fist of Krosa.
So that's my "landfall"/land-matters playtest report! Anyone else trying this? Any thoughts on what other Standard or Extended cards will work well in a "land matters" environment?
Optional background info on me:
I'm a longtime Magic player, but long distance and adult-life logistics keep me far away from the friends who I played with when I was younger. So for the past few years, I've been enjoying Magic Online. The problem was, I kept trying for a way to recreate the "casual" experience, and was never really satisfied with it. It's simply too hard to find other players whose concept of "casual" matches mine, and whose card pools are comparable.
I recently started playing Pauper, and I've really enjoyed it. For the first time ever, I don't feel dirty for playing counterspells or land destruction or discard effects, because it's such an even playing field. I'm enjoying the competitive thrill of simply constructing a better deck than an opponent trying to do the same.
The problem is, I don't really know where to start in Standard. There's such a wide variety of decks in the Casual room that I don't know if I'm winning because my deck is good or because my opponent is bad. I made one attempt to netdeck (copying this Anathemancer deck almost exactly) and played in the Tournament Practice room, but I did horribly.
The part where I ask for advice:
- What is the most foolproof deck that I can build that doesn't rely too heavily on Lorwyn/Shadowmoor cards that are about to rotate out of Standard? Ideally, I'd prefer not to spend a ton of money. But I'd spend up to $40 to make a decent deck.
- After the Tournament Practice room, what's the first step I should take to dip my toe in the waters of competitive Constructed play?
Any wisdom you can pass along would be greatly appreciated!Your argument has been a little wishy-washy, but this is one point you're sticking to. And I'm saying it's still inaccurate.
For the past nine years, Magic has built each of its blocks around a marketable "big idea." Each big idea can typically be summed up in one or two words, and according to various articles by MaRo and others, that big idea serves as the starting point for all design and development.
Invasion block: multicolor
Odyssey block: graveyard
Onslaught block: tribal
Mirrodin block: artifacts
Kamigawa block: Japanese mythology
Ravnica block: multicolor (2-color pairs)
Time Spiral block: time
Lorwyn block: tribal
Shadowmoor: hybrid mana
Alara block: multicolor (3-color trios)
Of those big ideas, most are mechanical themes. Kamigawa's theme was top-down, flavor-driven design. Time Spiral's theme was top-down, though it led a bit more directly into "time matters" mechanics like suspend. But the point is that they were big ideas, not diluted by other concepts. I was wrong in my earlier post when I said Kamigawa wasn't entirely top-down design. As you can see from the very end of this article on Kamigawa design, the legendary subtheme was an afterthought.
So "what WotC does now" is make sets with clear themes. And we know that Zendikar's theme is not going to be a flavor-driven, top-down theme. This quote from Rosewater clearly states that the set was built around a design-based theme:
"There is a space in Magic design that we've explored on individual cards but have never explored thematically as a block theme. We started with that theme and then crafted a world that made it make sense."
So either "land matters" is the theme of the set, or it's a minor subtheme and some other theme is far more important. But based on its last 9 years of history, WotC is not going to release a set where the theme is "land matters... sort of." And unless they've been deliberately misleading us or the theme is a slight variation like "mana matters," there's no other theme that could match all the hints we've been given.
I'm a little disappointed that this card isn't uncommon, because I'd like to see even cooler stuff in the rares. But if land is the theme of this set, perhaps an unusual percentage of rare cards will be lands.
I suspect there will be some spin on dual lands, but I'd expect them to be based on interaction with other lands. Something like River of Tears or the fetch lands (neither of which are original ideas, I know).