I'd put it in a UB discard deck. Rule of law is counterproductive when you have underworld dreams out and your opponent is taking 7 damage per spell they cast anyway.
I think that there are way too many ways that could explode in your face.
1. Cards like Tivadar's Crusade would be ridiculous. That is just the first one that came to mind.
2. Your lords would pump up your opponents creatures.
3. Dragonstorm and cards like that would be downright stupid. Especially considering how many cards have "come into play" effects. 9 Mana to pull up 4 Laquatus's Champions if the tide was right. Just another older card that pops into my head.
It seems like a card like this could turn into a, "do whatever you want this turn" kind of card.
Well... Tividar's crusade + Hack of Velis Vel = 1UWW Wrath... not that broken after all. In fact, you're spending an extra colored mana and using up the same number of cards for the same effect. Might give a UBW deck an excuse to use up 16 slots to run 12 wraths, but heaven, hell and Tividar knows why you'd want to do that...
Some lords would pump opponents creatures... the hack changes a lord from giving a narrow range of creatures a bonus to giving all creatures the same bonus a la magnify... or glorius anthem, depending on the lord...
Spending an extra U on dragonstorm to tutor up any creature seems actually balanced for me unless my lack of sleep and slight cold are driving me insane... I mean dragonstorm costs like a billion mana already... and you can already win in one turn with dragons... why would you need to go with another species? Make a dragonstorm deck with a wide series of magic bullet kill conditions?
Does anyone think that they'd print a changeling card like this:
U Hack of Velis Vel
Tribal Instant - Changeling
Replace all instances of creature type on a card with all creature types. (For example, a card that gives all wolves +1/+1 would now give all creature types +1/+1.)
Draw a card.
Is there anything obscenely broken about doing this? Underpowered? Baffling?
The mission statement of Wizards of the Coast, is to bring to all people of the world, a common ground: games, and a love of them.
Sure it sounds wishy-washy, but nonetheless, to have all people of all cultures recognize in each other the same love of fun - it would be a wondrous state of affairs, to say the least.
My point was that the chance of the whole world coming together to play games, and practical real-world problems also disappearing are pretty slim. The Olympics are an excellent example of this pattern.
In order to achieve a net positive as I described above, the actions taken must also serve practical human needs.
Bravo ark for bringing this social trend to light.
We are western otaku... omfg... this is nuts.
At the risk of turning this into more strange topic than it is:
I am an art student. I spend my time divided between making films, graphic design and reading about games. I too don't get nearly the same enjoyment out of playing a game as I do out of reading about it.
However, people who make, play, and read about games are frequently brilliant and at the same time obsessed with something that often has net negative social value.
What do I mean by negative social value? Net positive social value is something that:
a) Helps you to be more widely accepted and understood.
b) Helps others in their lives and interests.
c) Directly or indirectly promotes a general feeling of well being in yourself and those around you.
Something with negative social value:
a) Alienates you from the people around you.
b) Makes it more difficult to help others in their lives and interests
c) Directly or indirectly promotes anxiety, anger and frustration.
Magic is too specialized, impractical (Meaning it doesn't add to much more than being a better Magic player) and stigmatized as "uncool" to actually launch itself into something that could be widely considered positive. At best, you can attibute abstract qualities to your learning and growth through Magic (I learned problem solving, social skills, etc...). The issue is that you only learn these skills through those who have approached Magic as well, and those people are frequently lacking in net positive social value as well.
Games are becoming more accepted, though, so they may one day reach something resembling net positive social value (Though I can't imagine how, without turning into something akin to religion). Games don't intrinsically provide for basic human needs, though. They are by their very nature at best "practice for something more real" and at worst a meaningless waste of time.
I don't think there is a place yet for "game fans" in our culture. It's a totally new category of individual as far as I'm aware, but there's clearly more than a few of us out there. The question is: What do we do now that we know about each other?
I think each list is a category, from which only one or two items are relevant.
What intruiges me is the whole mechanical apparatus thing. I mean, we're not talking about images on these apparatusses, we're talking about the device itself and its inner workings.
So... what could this mean? Well.. for example, if someone wants to make a recording medium called Garruk Wildspeaker (Like Blu-Ray dvds) they'll run into trouble. If someone wants to make a planeswalking device, well... they'll have to call it an interdimensional portal or somesuch because Wizards already called the Jace Beleren-izer. If someone wants to refer to using a vending machine as 'yanking Ajani's Goldmane'... well you get the idea...
Basically they don't want Chandra Hearts Tezzeret t-shirts popping up from someone they can't sue.
Lorwyn, however is the one that's weird for me. Why wouldn't they want to trademark it further? In comparison, it looks like we're with the five planeswalkers for the long haul because they've clearly been well-protected in advance.
Lorwyn is a bit of a "soft-lock" on the idea of tribes. There are advantages to staying in-tribe and added capabilities for going out-of-tribe. It's making it easy on newcomers to build coherent decks while giving veterans something to chew on. I mean, there are a whole bunch of creatures that reward inter-tribe play...
one well placed terror or boomerang and you're sent home crying. its SUPER fragile, a one trick pony and once someone sees it once, it will be fairly easy to stop via sideboard... or just waiting you out for a perfectly timed tricky spell.
I'm not necessarily picking on you, but... can someone point out to me a combo that doesn't have the above qualities?
Yeah I agree with the whole showing your kids/showing your mom thing. Lorwyn is denifitely more friendly and approachable.
I recently got back into magic, spent $300 on cards, etc... then I went to a couple tournaments and the people there... well... I didn't like them at all and I stopped playing again. Maybe Lorwyn will bring a friendlier, cheerier, less cliquey crowd around.
Eyes of the wisent is a form of card disadvantage prevention. It works kind of like damage prevention in that it lets you live longer and do more... well... just during your own turn... ok ok... it would suck maindeck 90% of the time.
I want to take a moment to look at the optimal deck that would play eyes.
1.) Given that a player would only play an instant on your turn if it would be better than allowing the spell to resolve, it stands to reason that a deck with no single card better than a 4/4 would benefit from this card, ensuring that no opponent would ever consider countering a spell on your turn, or messing with one of your attacks.
So eyes.dec contains no single card better than a vanilla 4/4, and during a game carefully weighs whether anything would be "too good to play".
2.) Given #1, Gaddock Teeg would be an excellent addition to eyes.dec. Why? He prevents non-creature spells that cost greater than 4. Since a vanilla 4/4 costs an average of 4-5 mana, any non-creature spell equivalent to your 4/4 elementals can't be played at all! Wait. That just makes Gaddock a whole lot better than Eyes...
3.) Moving along, we already have 2 cards in the 2cc slot. What else would fit in this deck? Kithkin have the highest number of good, fast, on-color cards in the set that are strictly worse than a 4/4's. So keep those Thoughtweft Trios away! Well... play them, but just never on a creature so bad your opponent would think the Trio would give you more than a 4/4 vanilla advantage.
4.) Well, Gaddock and Eyes kind of suck against anything but a non-creature oriented deck. They also suck while in a deck with 4cc+ cards you intend to use to win. And this is a creature-oriented block. Hmm... you had better tell your friends to play mostly creatureless decks packed with reactive instants and high-cost sorceries, enchantments and artifacts so you can win.
My feeling is that Eyes of the Wisent exists as a "Metagame Sheepdog". Its existence matters more than its play in any one deck. People will lean towards (if even just slightly or via a sideboard) creature and sorcery-oriented builds to keep from being hosed by this card. It's like that absurd instant that hosed Rishadan Port.
It's a clue from Wizards that they want us to play a certain type of deck. This card might see sideboards for a bit until it's swept certain archetypes from the metgame. Once it's not useful anymore, people will stop using it. It's just not a solid card.
The people who were arguing that it's bad because it gives a choice are right. There exists no fantasy opponent with a mittful of instants who just loves playing them on your turn and just can't stop.
It's actually especially bad because it only hoses a few cards, and badly. And since the only way it can be good is if you have nothing better than a 4/4 to play AND if you do, your opponent won't try and hurt you or what you cast on his/her turn... well... might as well replace Eyes with an elf.
It's versatile and in limited it can be pretty strong.
But it's a sorcery and too expensive for constructed.
The reanimation ability is hopelessly overpriced, it costs B more than the unplayable Stir the Grave.
The -X/-X and the X life loss abilities combined is the only worthwhile combination and all you end up with is a superior version of Swallowing Plague(nothing to brag about) where your opponent loses the life instead of you gaining it.
The real utility of this card is how it responds to a wide variety of game states. Don't be surprised if you lose to an opponent comboing the two other abilities of Profane Command.
I thought of something cool. Do you think (idea x) might happen?
Person two:
(idea x) won't happen because it's inconsistent with what has already happened.
Person three:
We don't know what will happen.
Any thoughts?
Well... Tividar's crusade + Hack of Velis Vel = 1UWW Wrath... not that broken after all. In fact, you're spending an extra colored mana and using up the same number of cards for the same effect. Might give a UBW deck an excuse to use up 16 slots to run 12 wraths, but heaven, hell and Tividar knows why you'd want to do that...
Some lords would pump opponents creatures... the hack changes a lord from giving a narrow range of creatures a bonus to giving all creatures the same bonus a la magnify... or glorius anthem, depending on the lord...
Spending an extra U on dragonstorm to tutor up any creature seems actually balanced for me unless my lack of sleep and slight cold are driving me insane... I mean dragonstorm costs like a billion mana already... and you can already win in one turn with dragons... why would you need to go with another species? Make a dragonstorm deck with a wide series of magic bullet kill conditions?
U Hack of Velis Vel
Tribal Instant - Changeling
Replace all instances of creature type on a card with all creature types. (For example, a card that gives all wolves +1/+1 would now give all creature types +1/+1.)
Draw a card.
Is there anything obscenely broken about doing this? Underpowered? Baffling?
http://www.jca-online.com/murakami.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku
My point was that the chance of the whole world coming together to play games, and practical real-world problems also disappearing are pretty slim. The Olympics are an excellent example of this pattern.
In order to achieve a net positive as I described above, the actions taken must also serve practical human needs.
We are western otaku... omfg... this is nuts.
At the risk of turning this into more strange topic than it is:
I am an art student. I spend my time divided between making films, graphic design and reading about games. I too don't get nearly the same enjoyment out of playing a game as I do out of reading about it.
However, people who make, play, and read about games are frequently brilliant and at the same time obsessed with something that often has net negative social value.
What do I mean by negative social value? Net positive social value is something that:
a) Helps you to be more widely accepted and understood.
b) Helps others in their lives and interests.
c) Directly or indirectly promotes a general feeling of well being in yourself and those around you.
Something with negative social value:
a) Alienates you from the people around you.
b) Makes it more difficult to help others in their lives and interests
c) Directly or indirectly promotes anxiety, anger and frustration.
Magic is too specialized, impractical (Meaning it doesn't add to much more than being a better Magic player) and stigmatized as "uncool" to actually launch itself into something that could be widely considered positive. At best, you can attibute abstract qualities to your learning and growth through Magic (I learned problem solving, social skills, etc...). The issue is that you only learn these skills through those who have approached Magic as well, and those people are frequently lacking in net positive social value as well.
Games are becoming more accepted, though, so they may one day reach something resembling net positive social value (Though I can't imagine how, without turning into something akin to religion). Games don't intrinsically provide for basic human needs, though. They are by their very nature at best "practice for something more real" and at worst a meaningless waste of time.
I don't think there is a place yet for "game fans" in our culture. It's a totally new category of individual as far as I'm aware, but there's clearly more than a few of us out there. The question is: What do we do now that we know about each other?
What intruiges me is the whole mechanical apparatus thing. I mean, we're not talking about images on these apparatusses, we're talking about the device itself and its inner workings.
So... what could this mean? Well.. for example, if someone wants to make a recording medium called Garruk Wildspeaker (Like Blu-Ray dvds) they'll run into trouble. If someone wants to make a planeswalking device, well... they'll have to call it an interdimensional portal or somesuch because Wizards already called the Jace Beleren-izer. If someone wants to refer to using a vending machine as 'yanking Ajani's Goldmane'... well you get the idea...
Basically they don't want Chandra Hearts Tezzeret t-shirts popping up from someone they can't sue.
Lorwyn, however is the one that's weird for me. Why wouldn't they want to trademark it further? In comparison, it looks like we're with the five planeswalkers for the long haul because they've clearly been well-protected in advance.
I'm not necessarily picking on you, but... can someone point out to me a combo that doesn't have the above qualities?
I recently got back into magic, spent $300 on cards, etc... then I went to a couple tournaments and the people there... well... I didn't like them at all and I stopped playing again. Maybe Lorwyn will bring a friendlier, cheerier, less cliquey crowd around.
I want to take a moment to look at the optimal deck that would play eyes.
1.) Given that a player would only play an instant on your turn if it would be better than allowing the spell to resolve, it stands to reason that a deck with no single card better than a 4/4 would benefit from this card, ensuring that no opponent would ever consider countering a spell on your turn, or messing with one of your attacks.
So eyes.dec contains no single card better than a vanilla 4/4, and during a game carefully weighs whether anything would be "too good to play".
2.) Given #1, Gaddock Teeg would be an excellent addition to eyes.dec. Why? He prevents non-creature spells that cost greater than 4. Since a vanilla 4/4 costs an average of 4-5 mana, any non-creature spell equivalent to your 4/4 elementals can't be played at all! Wait. That just makes Gaddock a whole lot better than Eyes...
3.) Moving along, we already have 2 cards in the 2cc slot. What else would fit in this deck? Kithkin have the highest number of good, fast, on-color cards in the set that are strictly worse than a 4/4's. So keep those Thoughtweft Trios away! Well... play them, but just never on a creature so bad your opponent would think the Trio would give you more than a 4/4 vanilla advantage.
4.) Well, Gaddock and Eyes kind of suck against anything but a non-creature oriented deck. They also suck while in a deck with 4cc+ cards you intend to use to win. And this is a creature-oriented block. Hmm... you had better tell your friends to play mostly creatureless decks packed with reactive instants and high-cost sorceries, enchantments and artifacts so you can win.
My feeling is that Eyes of the Wisent exists as a "Metagame Sheepdog". Its existence matters more than its play in any one deck. People will lean towards (if even just slightly or via a sideboard) creature and sorcery-oriented builds to keep from being hosed by this card. It's like that absurd instant that hosed Rishadan Port.
It's a clue from Wizards that they want us to play a certain type of deck. This card might see sideboards for a bit until it's swept certain archetypes from the metgame. Once it's not useful anymore, people will stop using it. It's just not a solid card.
The people who were arguing that it's bad because it gives a choice are right. There exists no fantasy opponent with a mittful of instants who just loves playing them on your turn and just can't stop.
It's actually especially bad because it only hoses a few cards, and badly. And since the only way it can be good is if you have nothing better than a 4/4 to play AND if you do, your opponent won't try and hurt you or what you cast on his/her turn... well... might as well replace Eyes with an elf.
The real utility of this card is how it responds to a wide variety of game states. Don't be surprised if you lose to an opponent comboing the two other abilities of Profane Command.