Well, they look like they're going to manage to make this set every bit as boring mechanically as the original Theros was.
Storyline-wise, I'd be surprised if Elspeth doesn't get "free" by the end of it and return to her old planeswalking ways. One thing I'm curious about is whether we will see Gideon in Ilysia or not.
wouldn't call in mother of all elves decks but just a different take on the beatdown deck.
sideboard is really dependent on the matchups you run into the most.
It's meant to be a silly joke, playing off the fact that Marwyn is a mom of sorts, or "midwife to mothers and leader to all." It's not because it's the best Elf deck ever made, though I rather like it. Our meta has a decent variety of stuff, so I'd like a good sideboard that works well against most of the commonly-played top decks. Or at least, is functional against them. Any suggestions?
Here's my current Elf deck (I call it "The Mother of All Elf Decks" on TappedOut). I was waiting to rebuild it after Modern Horizons came out, hoping that Elves would get some love. Sadly, they did not. I still want to build Elves, but not sure which way to go at the moment. I'm thinking of mainboarding Heroic Intervention as the deck's most serious weakness is to board sweeps—now, of course, it bounces back better than most from that, but it's still a consideration. An early sweep is far more troublesome than a later one, and Heroic would fairly easily negate that. I used to run Lead the Stampede, but ended up going with an experimental build in Genesis Wave. This has won me games (though I have yet to tournament test it) many times: X=7+ is absolutely savage and easy to manage. Hits lands, creatures, and if Akroma's Memorial comes with it (or I have already put it out), everything can go that turn. They can attack with flying, vigilance, trample, protection, etc., then all tap for mana to fuel Ezuri's power.
The idea was to have redundant win conditions. Marwyn, a very underappreciated card, has my favorite Elf art and is also a mana-producing wincon-enabler, and can herself turn into a wincon as she powers up. Of course, Ezuri is the classic method of Elves getting so strong they tear planes in half and beat opponents with each piece. Joraga Warcaller is also another great mana sink, especially with Cavern, and also further enhances Marwyn. I can hard-cast Akroma's Memorial or get it off of a Genesis Wave, and it also turns my Elves into beaters even without EZ E.
Winding Way now merits some consideration, and the sideboard definitely needs help here. I'm not sure what to sideboard. Damping Sphere and the like, I think, but I wanted to sort out the main 60. I've considered Primal Command both for grave hate and for getting its other uses.
I like Lead better, but don't currently use it. My strategy currently involves CoCo and powering out quick Genesis Waves for big. Winding Way is cool, but isn't going to do anything to make Elves more relevant.
I'm very disappointed. Elves got virtually nothing and needed just a few things to be relevant. Angels and Dinosaurs are my other tribes, but didn't get nearly enough. While I'm excited for Slivers, none of the main stuff I run got any support except Zombies.
I just hope that the set does so well there's a Modern Horizons 2.
Oof, that is pretty brutal...you'd have to attack with the Spitfire before unloading all your burn spells, but you could potentially kill your opponent in one attack! Cavalcade on 2, Spitfire on 3, attack on four, throw a Lightning Bolt, a Shock, and something else, and they die if they can't rid of the creature (taking 1 from Cavalcade, Spitfire goes up to 4 power, 3 from Bolt, Spitfire up to 7, 2 from shock, Spitfire up to 10, a Skullcrack or something does it). Doesn't require a god hand, just a bit of a nut draw. I may have to pick up Cavalcade, since I was looking to make a Chandra-based deck with the Spitfire, anyway!
I'm curious what you mean, because when I exported my pseudo-randomized decklist to notepad, it was still in the same psuedo-random "cards added" order.
I also want to ask a dumb question: how does WotC benefit from having a clearly broken shuffler? The debacle was on the front page of Reddit, Chris Clay (the effective Boss of MTG Arena) was pinged multiple times in that thread. Wizards absolutely knows of the shuffler weirdness. And a lot of the players know that WotC knows. They can't ignore it at this point, and it's in their obvious self-interest to fix it.
You are asserting that Wizards is deliberately not fixing the shuffler they know is broken. This means that either A) It's in WotC's best interests to not fix the shuffler, or B) WotC is deliberately acting AGAINST its own best interests. So here's my question to you: Which do you think it is, and why?
Personally I would have very much appreciated at least a note that they're looking into things, and I'm a little concerned that there isn't one. Just because Artifact, once heralded as the game that would kill magic, has ceased to exist (their own numbers show less than 500 active players per day) doesn't mean Arena shouldn't keep being great.
To put it simply, and none too flatteringly, they probably don't care much. If Arena is making them money, and obviously it is, they're clearly not very interested in putting out a well-balanced product. Arena has a huge list of issues right now and not one of them has been addressed. The UI, for instance, is in massive need of an overhaul purely for clarity. The amount of things that do not work properly, either due to straight-up error (abilities not firing) or cruft on screen (try targeting multiple cards, or even one with keywords, where your card is blocking the right side of the screen, the arrows are in the way, and the reminder text on the abilities makes it impossible to see the card you're targeting). Instead of fixing that, they add the laughably overpriced Guild bundles that are so chintzy that they only give you some card styles, and not even any copies of the cards themselves. For $20, you get a few styles and sleeves, but no actual cards.
That alone shows they have no interest in creating an introductory product here, or a valid replacement for MTGO. They want only cash, and are charging pretty crazy prices for anything in-game. The game has no decent tutorial for new players. The UI is actively harmful to learning and playing the game. Building a decent card pool requires a lot of grind, which isn't itself a crime, or a huge expense, which when combined with the former is definitely a black mark.
I play Arena because it's fairly popular to stream and it's a way to keep sharp, practicing the game every day. I won't spend money because I won't support the insanely greedy practices WotC is showing here—and I used to think that Blizzard was bad with Hearthstone! Certainly I wouldn't recommend this game to new players, and Wizards needs to be told the many things they are doing wrong. Hopefully they can fix it and make Arena into something great. Right now, I definitely would not classify it as such.
I hate Ajani's Pridemate...mostly because I've gotten my backside handed to me too many times by one that got out of control before I could get rid of it.
There went the popular theory here that WAR walkers flip to creatures or vice versa.
Good riddance, I say. Transform stuff is often more trouble than it's worth, especially in the case of planeswalkers. The idea that they are losing their power can simply be represented by taking loyalty counters from them, or stuff like The Immortal Sun which doesn't let them use their abilities. There's no need to add extra complexity that doesn't really reward anything.
My bet(maybe just hope) to beat Bolas...Sarkhan. Turns into a dragon and destroys Bolas, saving the day. Yay, and the peasants rejoice.
Dark horse- Garruk. Not much bigger game to hunt then Bolas. And the peasants rejoice.
I mean, after everyone and everything else in the nearest twelve planes softens him up, sure. Neither of those guys remotely stands a chance, even with a lot of help, until Bolas is weakened by something. On Amonkhet, he casually chose to face the Gatewatch, knowing they had some sort of battle plan for him. He willingly let them try everything they wanted to try, no-sold every single bit of it, then absolutely schooled them without putting in any effort. The only reason he didn't kill them all—which he could have with only a minimum of effort—was because of his longer-reaching plans that included them.
Bolas is already pretty much the most powerful being in the Multiverse. Maybe something like Emrakul could threaten him. Even then, the other Eldrazi Titans were slain by beings (the Gatewatch) whom Bolas already bested easily. Ugin got crushed by a Bolas who was less powerful then than he is now—although if his resurrection is truly a surprise to Bolas, I'm guessing that will be the key to his defeat. Somehow, I'd honestly be surprised if Bolas didn't know what happened on Tarkir and expect or know that Ugin's alive, but who knows?
Nicky B is already pretty absurdly powerful. I'd like to see his planeswalker card represent him nearly to the point of reaching godhood, just before he gets taken down. Just to see what it'd look like!
He did make the point in the article, though, that they weren't positive if people dis-liked Eternalize on its own, or just really liked Embalm and thought Eternalize was not a good riff on it.
I thought it was an okay way to show a pumped-up Embalm, but honestly, I'm very much in favor of Magic streamlining lots of things. Subtypes and keywords in particular. I mean, maybe they could have given these creatures something like a trigger that puts +1/+1 counters on them when they're Embalmed? No need for two very similar yet distinct keywords for it. That's how you end up with flashback, jump-start, and retrace. Or Stampeding Serow and, say, anything with the Elk subtype. Is there anything that is going to care much about an Elk subtype? "Beast" covers a lot of nonspecific stuff. "Dinosaur" is good on its own, and maybe things like "Snake" and whatnot should stay, but do we need Elk? Rhino? Hippo? There's a lot of cruft. I think the list could stand to have some streamlining.
I was interested in the theory until the obvious Jace hate reared its ugly head. The planeswalker trap, I can believe. Bolas trying to kill Jace, I can believe. But I sincerely doubt Jace is going to die anytime soon in the story, and it royally irritates me every time someone says "I hope Jace dies", to the point I hope he doesn't die simply out of spite towards the Jaters (he's not even my favorite character, his haters are simply that irritating). At the very least I want him to go back to Vryn, to look for his parents if they're still alive, to try and bring actual peace between the Ampryn and Trovians, and of course to face the repurcussions of his duel with Alhammarret. All it will take is Bolas or Tezzeret attempting to harness the energy of the Mage-Rings to give Jace a justifiable reason to go to Vryn.
So please, kindly leave the Jace hate out of an otherwise reasonable theory. Bolas will likely try to trap planeswalkers. He will likely try to kill Jace. I doubt he will succeed, and I'll be downright pissed off if he in fact does because then not only will I have to put up with Jaters celebrating obnoxiously but also the fact it was Bolas, a character I personally dislike, who did it.
Seriously, Jaters can piss off.
Believe it or not, some people dislike the characters you do, and especially when they're "Golden Boy" characters who eat up design space and spotlight space year after year. I don't hate Jace, but if they killed him off the setting and game would be the better for it. This idea that you can dismiss everyone who doesn't like Your Favorite Character as "haters" is pretty poor form and generally is an attempt to stifle discussion.
I think the game would be better off if Jace got killed, Lili got killed, and Bolas got killed, and they'd have valid story reasons to do so. I'm also pretty sure that not one of those things will happen. Wizards isn't very good in the storytelling department, clinging to extremely tired and re-hashed tropes and mediocre characters.
However, I also understand the idea of being upset if they kill off a character you like, and can relate. I damn near quit the game when they fridged Avacyn. That whole block was horrible and pretty much ruined Innistrad. So I'm not in a rush to see Jace fans made miserable by killing off their favorite guy, either. It's not a pleasant feeling.
Bolas is the likeliest to be "killed," and then in some kind of stinger ending there's a faint laugh in the distance, or a horned shadow half-glimpsed in the fading light, or some other way of showing that maybe Bolas isn't dead, for realsies, and could come back some day.
Jace has become the de facto face of Magic and has such huge brand power that disposing of Jace now would be commercial branding suicide. Jace isn't going away any time soon based on that alone.
Honestly, I have to vehemently (but politely) disagree. Losing Jace wouldn't affect sales of Magic in the slightest. No one who plays the game competitively cares about the story that much. I almost quit after they fridged Avacyn and gave the Angels of Innistrad all Raid Boss Disease, so I understand, but competitive players don't care. The people who collect don't care. It wouldn't tank their sales. Magic isn't popular or successful right now because of Jace; losing him would disappoint some people, but at the end of the day things would go on.
They're not going to kill Jace, though, nor Liliana. Too many unresolved plot threads. Vryn is definitely one. The Raven Man and such. The soap opera-style switching of romantic partners—though I'll admit, the Jace and Vraska dynamic in Ixalan was probably the best-written stuff Wizards has put out, and that story was pretty enjoyable to read. It'd be a shame to lose that, though I'll admit I enjoyed reading Lili's snarky teasing of Jace. Either way, though, at the end of the day, none of that will affect the game's success in any meaningful way.
The only idea I got of how they are reintroduce is tezzeret going to them and the phyrexians finally find a way to get their old planar portal’s again
Time flows like a river, and history repeats.
By golly, it's like it's the late-90s again!
That is probably what will happen. Just like the Eldrazi in Innistrad were predicted and then done very poorly, and the storyline of Amonkhet, and of Theros, etc. Wizards' storytelling is about as good as that of Blizzard: passable at best, full of tired tropes and predictable, re-hashed storylines. It's only a matter of time before the Phyrexians become a thing again, and they've been pretty obviously foreshadowing the return for a while now. The problem is that when they do that, it's not likely to be anything but a re-hash of old stuff, and won't be done particularly well. Who knows? They might surprise me, but I don't have much faith in that at the moment.
Personally, what I'd like to see is the Weatherlight's power core destroyed and Serra's realm spring back into existence at the climax of a new Phyrexian invasion. The Phyrexians are utterly wiped out, we get Serra and her realm back, Jhoira gets a new awesome Angel-built ship capable of traveling through planes, Tiana as her mechanic/first mate, etc.
This is really frustrating. Why did they have to create a warping fake shuffler algorithm rather than a normal one?
Because they aren't interested in creating a fun and fair game experience here. Like Hearthstone, this game is really a creation of pure greed, and one of the worst ways to get people into Magic I could imagine. You can't even get an unrigged shuffle, for crying out loud! It's not a good representation of what the game is actually like. The UI is, honestly, in many ways worse than MTGO—there are times I can't even see what I am targeting because of the awful curved arrows and the huge cards blocking the screen so I can't just target something.
Arena as a replacement for the aging MTGO and a way to get more people playing is, itself, a good idea. If it'd worked as such, it'd be great. Arena is an utter failure, in my opinion, in both ways, however. The limitations on buying cards means it's pretty much the dreaded "pay to win." Its interface is actually a lot worse than that of MTGO because it can be nearly impossible to just properly target or time something thanks to an inexcusable amount of cruft. All the flash and effects mean nothing when the end result is clunkier than its predecessor.
At this point, I kinda just want to post a lot of reviews and everything recommending people to stay away from the game. Definitely don't spend money on it. Wizards needs to start losing money so they get the idea that the product, as given to us, with a rigged shuffler, pay-to-win gambling-style system (as opposed to more straightforward P2W where you could just at least buy individual cards), and utterly heinous UI, is not acceptable. This game is, sadly, a complete failure in all aspects right now.
I would like to know whether Serra and her realm came back into existence or not. The canon is cloudy there thanks to the novels, and I'm rather hoping she did (so maybe we could see a Serra planeswalker card next set).
Storyline-wise, I'd be surprised if Elspeth doesn't get "free" by the end of it and return to her old planeswalking ways. One thing I'm curious about is whether we will see Gideon in Ilysia or not.
It's meant to be a silly joke, playing off the fact that Marwyn is a mom of sorts, or "midwife to mothers and leader to all." It's not because it's the best Elf deck ever made, though I rather like it. Our meta has a decent variety of stuff, so I'd like a good sideboard that works well against most of the commonly-played top decks. Or at least, is functional against them. Any suggestions?
The idea was to have redundant win conditions. Marwyn, a very underappreciated card, has my favorite Elf art and is also a mana-producing wincon-enabler, and can herself turn into a wincon as she powers up. Of course, Ezuri is the classic method of Elves getting so strong they tear planes in half and beat opponents with each piece. Joraga Warcaller is also another great mana sink, especially with Cavern, and also further enhances Marwyn. I can hard-cast Akroma's Memorial or get it off of a Genesis Wave, and it also turns my Elves into beaters even without EZ E.
Winding Way now merits some consideration, and the sideboard definitely needs help here. I'm not sure what to sideboard. Damping Sphere and the like, I think, but I wanted to sort out the main 60. I've considered Primal Command both for grave hate and for getting its other uses.
I'm also thinking it needs at least one Boseiju, Who Shelters All, to help punch through those critical Waves and CoCos against control.
At any rate, fellow Elves, I would welcome thoughts, suggestions, and green mana!
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Heritage Druid
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Dwynen's Elite
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Marwyn, the Nurturer
4 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
1 Reclamation Sage
4 Collected Company
Sorceries (3)
3 Genesis Wave
Artifacts (2)
2 Akroma's Memorial
Lands (18)
4 Cavern of Souls
14 Forest
2 Beast Within
4 Heroic Intervention
2 Natural State
2 Reclamation Sage
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Tajuru Preserver
I just hope that the set does so well there's a Modern Horizons 2.
Oof, that is pretty brutal...you'd have to attack with the Spitfire before unloading all your burn spells, but you could potentially kill your opponent in one attack! Cavalcade on 2, Spitfire on 3, attack on four, throw a Lightning Bolt, a Shock, and something else, and they die if they can't rid of the creature (taking 1 from Cavalcade, Spitfire goes up to 4 power, 3 from Bolt, Spitfire up to 7, 2 from shock, Spitfire up to 10, a Skullcrack or something does it). Doesn't require a god hand, just a bit of a nut draw. I may have to pick up Cavalcade, since I was looking to make a Chandra-based deck with the Spitfire, anyway!
To put it simply, and none too flatteringly, they probably don't care much. If Arena is making them money, and obviously it is, they're clearly not very interested in putting out a well-balanced product. Arena has a huge list of issues right now and not one of them has been addressed. The UI, for instance, is in massive need of an overhaul purely for clarity. The amount of things that do not work properly, either due to straight-up error (abilities not firing) or cruft on screen (try targeting multiple cards, or even one with keywords, where your card is blocking the right side of the screen, the arrows are in the way, and the reminder text on the abilities makes it impossible to see the card you're targeting). Instead of fixing that, they add the laughably overpriced Guild bundles that are so chintzy that they only give you some card styles, and not even any copies of the cards themselves. For $20, you get a few styles and sleeves, but no actual cards.
That alone shows they have no interest in creating an introductory product here, or a valid replacement for MTGO. They want only cash, and are charging pretty crazy prices for anything in-game. The game has no decent tutorial for new players. The UI is actively harmful to learning and playing the game. Building a decent card pool requires a lot of grind, which isn't itself a crime, or a huge expense, which when combined with the former is definitely a black mark.
I play Arena because it's fairly popular to stream and it's a way to keep sharp, practicing the game every day. I won't spend money because I won't support the insanely greedy practices WotC is showing here—and I used to think that Blizzard was bad with Hearthstone! Certainly I wouldn't recommend this game to new players, and Wizards needs to be told the many things they are doing wrong. Hopefully they can fix it and make Arena into something great. Right now, I definitely would not classify it as such.
Tezzeret, Master of Puppets?
Good riddance, I say. Transform stuff is often more trouble than it's worth, especially in the case of planeswalkers. The idea that they are losing their power can simply be represented by taking loyalty counters from them, or stuff like The Immortal Sun which doesn't let them use their abilities. There's no need to add extra complexity that doesn't really reward anything.
I mean, after everyone and everything else in the nearest twelve planes softens him up, sure. Neither of those guys remotely stands a chance, even with a lot of help, until Bolas is weakened by something. On Amonkhet, he casually chose to face the Gatewatch, knowing they had some sort of battle plan for him. He willingly let them try everything they wanted to try, no-sold every single bit of it, then absolutely schooled them without putting in any effort. The only reason he didn't kill them all—which he could have with only a minimum of effort—was because of his longer-reaching plans that included them.
Bolas is already pretty much the most powerful being in the Multiverse. Maybe something like Emrakul could threaten him. Even then, the other Eldrazi Titans were slain by beings (the Gatewatch) whom Bolas already bested easily. Ugin got crushed by a Bolas who was less powerful then than he is now—although if his resurrection is truly a surprise to Bolas, I'm guessing that will be the key to his defeat. Somehow, I'd honestly be surprised if Bolas didn't know what happened on Tarkir and expect or know that Ugin's alive, but who knows?
Nicky B is already pretty absurdly powerful. I'd like to see his planeswalker card represent him nearly to the point of reaching godhood, just before he gets taken down. Just to see what it'd look like!
I thought it was an okay way to show a pumped-up Embalm, but honestly, I'm very much in favor of Magic streamlining lots of things. Subtypes and keywords in particular. I mean, maybe they could have given these creatures something like a trigger that puts +1/+1 counters on them when they're Embalmed? No need for two very similar yet distinct keywords for it. That's how you end up with flashback, jump-start, and retrace. Or Stampeding Serow and, say, anything with the Elk subtype. Is there anything that is going to care much about an Elk subtype? "Beast" covers a lot of nonspecific stuff. "Dinosaur" is good on its own, and maybe things like "Snake" and whatnot should stay, but do we need Elk? Rhino? Hippo? There's a lot of cruft. I think the list could stand to have some streamlining.
Believe it or not, some people dislike the characters you do, and especially when they're "Golden Boy" characters who eat up design space and spotlight space year after year. I don't hate Jace, but if they killed him off the setting and game would be the better for it. This idea that you can dismiss everyone who doesn't like Your Favorite Character as "haters" is pretty poor form and generally is an attempt to stifle discussion.
I think the game would be better off if Jace got killed, Lili got killed, and Bolas got killed, and they'd have valid story reasons to do so. I'm also pretty sure that not one of those things will happen. Wizards isn't very good in the storytelling department, clinging to extremely tired and re-hashed tropes and mediocre characters.
However, I also understand the idea of being upset if they kill off a character you like, and can relate. I damn near quit the game when they fridged Avacyn. That whole block was horrible and pretty much ruined Innistrad. So I'm not in a rush to see Jace fans made miserable by killing off their favorite guy, either. It's not a pleasant feeling.
Bolas is the likeliest to be "killed," and then in some kind of stinger ending there's a faint laugh in the distance, or a horned shadow half-glimpsed in the fading light, or some other way of showing that maybe Bolas isn't dead, for realsies, and could come back some day.
Honestly, I have to vehemently (but politely) disagree. Losing Jace wouldn't affect sales of Magic in the slightest. No one who plays the game competitively cares about the story that much. I almost quit after they fridged Avacyn and gave the Angels of Innistrad all Raid Boss Disease, so I understand, but competitive players don't care. The people who collect don't care. It wouldn't tank their sales. Magic isn't popular or successful right now because of Jace; losing him would disappoint some people, but at the end of the day things would go on.
They're not going to kill Jace, though, nor Liliana. Too many unresolved plot threads. Vryn is definitely one. The Raven Man and such. The soap opera-style switching of romantic partners—though I'll admit, the Jace and Vraska dynamic in Ixalan was probably the best-written stuff Wizards has put out, and that story was pretty enjoyable to read. It'd be a shame to lose that, though I'll admit I enjoyed reading Lili's snarky teasing of Jace. Either way, though, at the end of the day, none of that will affect the game's success in any meaningful way.
That is probably what will happen. Just like the Eldrazi in Innistrad were predicted and then done very poorly, and the storyline of Amonkhet, and of Theros, etc. Wizards' storytelling is about as good as that of Blizzard: passable at best, full of tired tropes and predictable, re-hashed storylines. It's only a matter of time before the Phyrexians become a thing again, and they've been pretty obviously foreshadowing the return for a while now. The problem is that when they do that, it's not likely to be anything but a re-hash of old stuff, and won't be done particularly well. Who knows? They might surprise me, but I don't have much faith in that at the moment.
Personally, what I'd like to see is the Weatherlight's power core destroyed and Serra's realm spring back into existence at the climax of a new Phyrexian invasion. The Phyrexians are utterly wiped out, we get Serra and her realm back, Jhoira gets a new awesome Angel-built ship capable of traveling through planes, Tiana as her mechanic/first mate, etc.
Because they aren't interested in creating a fun and fair game experience here. Like Hearthstone, this game is really a creation of pure greed, and one of the worst ways to get people into Magic I could imagine. You can't even get an unrigged shuffle, for crying out loud! It's not a good representation of what the game is actually like. The UI is, honestly, in many ways worse than MTGO—there are times I can't even see what I am targeting because of the awful curved arrows and the huge cards blocking the screen so I can't just target something.
Arena as a replacement for the aging MTGO and a way to get more people playing is, itself, a good idea. If it'd worked as such, it'd be great. Arena is an utter failure, in my opinion, in both ways, however. The limitations on buying cards means it's pretty much the dreaded "pay to win." Its interface is actually a lot worse than that of MTGO because it can be nearly impossible to just properly target or time something thanks to an inexcusable amount of cruft. All the flash and effects mean nothing when the end result is clunkier than its predecessor.
At this point, I kinda just want to post a lot of reviews and everything recommending people to stay away from the game. Definitely don't spend money on it. Wizards needs to start losing money so they get the idea that the product, as given to us, with a rigged shuffler, pay-to-win gambling-style system (as opposed to more straightforward P2W where you could just at least buy individual cards), and utterly heinous UI, is not acceptable. This game is, sadly, a complete failure in all aspects right now.