OK, who was the guy who wanted Affinity decks in Modern again?
...And how much can this propel Affinity to actually ban-worthy glory in a meta with enough Karn, the Great Creator, Stoneforge Mystic, and Asmor to cause trouble?
Affinity as people remember it will never come back. The only playable Modern card with Affinity on it is Thought Monitor. Affinity has basically changed to a Hardened Scales deck these days as it's just a more resilient and quicker deck.
I'm really not sure this land will see the light of day in Modern either. These decks need lands that can produce colour since the banning of Mox Opal especially, this isn't helping there, and just makes you even more vulnerable to hate.
This seems absolutely busted in EDH with Revel in Riches though.
Demilich feels like the most powerful card in the set so far. This is pretty easy to make a 0 mana 4/3 that Snapcaster Mage's every time it attacks. It even has the ability to recur from the graveyard, that feels a very real card in an otherwise very disappointing set.
It does hypothetically trigger your life gain matters stuff every turn in Limited. However it's a 2/3 for 3, the idea your going to get to attack with it multiple times seems fanciful, which makes me think it's bad even in limited.
I mean.... you drop this, it taps some dude, and itself, then, it remains tapped.....
to be untapped on turn 5 at the earliest where a vanilla 3/5 will not likely be relevant anymore.
if the entire ETB was a may, the card would be pretty good.
as is.... damn......
I mean, it's not like you're not going to be doing anything on turn four or five.
It's actually more of an aggro card. On the defensive, all this is doing is buying you time while dealing with nothing in the long run. In a game of parity or where you are on the offensive this is a game winner. It's same principle why Sleep is great in an aggro deck and terrible in a control deck. In blue especially you will tap down whatever they have that can block your flyers, then get free reign with your flyers for 2 turns, that is for sure a way to steal Limited games.
I mean.... you drop this, it taps some dude, and itself, then, it remains tapped.....
to be untapped on turn 5 at the earliest where a vanilla 3/5 will not likely be relevant anymore.
if the entire ETB was a may, the card would be pretty good.
as is.... damn......
I mean it's not Constructed playable but in Limited this is fine. Just flash this in before their declare attacker's step, tap down their best guy for 2 turns, and your guy will untap before this where it's a 3/5 for 3 mana, has the potential to steal games in any sort of race situation.
Is true, but in reality this only gets left unchecked if your opponent is horrendously screwed. By itself its a 4/3 for 5 with no evasion, that's a bad rate, so it likely will need support from other stuff to truly shine. Putting eg. Fly on this, seems a way to steal some Limited games.
Actually one of the better if not best dungeon card seen, albeit it requires a very specific shell which likely doesn't fit otherwise with the dungeon mechanic.
There is a Legacy deck out there somewhere that is going to go
T1 Taiga, Kobolt
T2 Invigorate, Mutagenic Growth, attack, Put nicol Bolas into play tapped and attacking
Though I guess you can replace bolas with The Ur Dragon, bogardan hellkite, etc
This is just an inferior version of Legacy Infect, which is an average deck in Legacy to begin with, but at least has access to blue, thus more better cards for Legacy.
The combo version below actually seems more like Blazing Shoal Infect, which got Blazing Shoal banned from Modern but seems to have pretty much no legs in Legacy:
Turn 1 minion.
Turn 2 scale up, Terror of Mount Velus, win
I like that game plan.
Admittedly, part of Blazing Shoal Infect's power was probably in Inkmoth Nexus's uncounterability.
Also that it didn't require a creature to just sit in play for a turn saying "please don't kill me as I'm all in on this really fragile strategy, and my deck does nothing if you break it up".
The Scale Up plan with this requires just as many moving pieces as killing with a T1 Glistener Elf, so I don't really see it being a thing as Infect is hardly tearing up Modern right now. There is too much interaction for T1 creatures, something that will only increase in a world of Ragavan, and there is even Force of Negation to protect against the combo. The problem with such a deck is there's no plan B, you are a pure glass cannon deck, your deck just completely folds and does nothing if your opponent breaks it up, those decks just don't cut it in Modern anymore.
Oh look, more unplayable dungeon chaff. And this is rare, just wow.
If I had any faith in play design I would believe maybe I am just massively underrating dungeons, but given they have got it wrong time after time the last few years I really don't, so I more think they have just massively overrated the mechanic and there isn't a single playable dungeon card shown so far.
For one thing, the mechanic has a ton of different options, and getting players to venture three or four times every turn would not only melt their brains but also take away the feeling of progress that's so much fun in going slowly.
Guess we won't get an enabler that merely costs mana to enter dungeons.
So, like Party in Zendikar, it's only a limited mechanic. I hope they do not do this in the future.
Venture was bound to get kicked down a notch with the mistakes of Companion breathing down its neck. There's still a large number of people out there who think Venture is way more broken than Companion because of how terrified they are of outside-the-game mechnics.
Who are those people exactly?
Companion was called as busted on day 0, especially Lurrus, people thought it was broken the second it was spoiled. Dungeons just looks like over costed limited chaff (and this isn't even good in limited). A lot of people would have to be very wrong for dungeons to be broken. Dungeons problems also compound, as a mechanic it's one that demands a critical mass of good dungeon cards. Think of like Adventures from Eldraine, without both the pushed Adventures and great 1 mana payoff the mechanic wouldn't have seen the light of day. I don't think there's been a playable dungeon card revealed so far, and this becomes a bigger problem when you could envisage maybe an average dungeon card seeing play if it was in an otherwise powerful shell, but that shell looks very unlikely to exist, making them all just unplayable when they have costed the mechanic like dungeons will be a very real thing.
These sort of cards always massively under perform these days. A 4/4 really isn't that big these days, so the snowball potential here will likely just never happen.
Oh look, more unplayable dungeon chaff. And this is rare, just wow.
If I had any faith in play design I would believe maybe I am just massively underrating dungeons, but given they have got it wrong time after time the last few years I really don't, so I more think they have just massively overrated the mechanic and there isn't a single playable dungeon card shown so far.
For one thing, the mechanic has a ton of different options, and getting players to venture three or four times every turn would not only melt their brains but also take away the feeling of progress that's so much fun in going slowly.
Guess we won't get an enabler that merely costs mana to enter dungeons.
The problem is if the set is then just under powered chaff then it will sell really badly. The only thing I don't have pulse with as I have no interest in it myself is whether the D&D aspect will really sell the set. Underpowered sets normally sell really badly though, and doing this so soon after Modern Horizons 2 just makes me think this even more.
Oh look, more unplayable dungeon chaff. And this is rare, just wow.
If I had any faith in play design I would believe maybe I am just massively underrating dungeons, but given they have got it wrong time after time the last few years I really don't, so I more think they have just massively overrated the mechanic and there isn't a single playable dungeon card shown so far.
They really aren't pushing this dungeon stuff at all. Based on what we've seen so far the mechanic seems completely unplayable. You need to venture about 4 times to get any serious payoff, but the enablers all seem really bad so far.
Wonder if ppl will play wish in standard. In Rivals of Ixalan the tutor that could pick things in the sideboard was a 'huge' card on most metas. if we had a "small teferi"'s effect on standard maybe this card could see alot of play idk.
Think it's always hard to break a card like Wish in Standard. It's basically demanding quick mana as otherwise where are you getting the mana to cast both Wish and whatever you fetched from your sideboard in the same turn?
Where this has potential is older formats. Tutors always only tend to see play in combo shells, and this has the potential to be like a 3 mana Demonic Tutor in those decks in the colour where most of the fast mana exists. The obvious immediately is Gifts Storm, but whether it's actually good enough would need to be tested as it is still adding 3 mana to your combo, and many combos are consistent already, it's the hate that hurts, and this doesn't help vs most hate.
Affinity as people remember it will never come back. The only playable Modern card with Affinity on it is Thought Monitor. Affinity has basically changed to a Hardened Scales deck these days as it's just a more resilient and quicker deck.
I'm really not sure this land will see the light of day in Modern either. These decks need lands that can produce colour since the banning of Mox Opal especially, this isn't helping there, and just makes you even more vulnerable to hate.
This seems absolutely busted in EDH with Revel in Riches though.
It's actually more of an aggro card. On the defensive, all this is doing is buying you time while dealing with nothing in the long run. In a game of parity or where you are on the offensive this is a game winner. It's same principle why Sleep is great in an aggro deck and terrible in a control deck. In blue especially you will tap down whatever they have that can block your flyers, then get free reign with your flyers for 2 turns, that is for sure a way to steal Limited games.
I mean it's not Constructed playable but in Limited this is fine. Just flash this in before their declare attacker's step, tap down their best guy for 2 turns, and your guy will untap before this where it's a 3/5 for 3 mana, has the potential to steal games in any sort of race situation.
Is true, but in reality this only gets left unchecked if your opponent is horrendously screwed. By itself its a 4/3 for 5 with no evasion, that's a bad rate, so it likely will need support from other stuff to truly shine. Putting eg. Fly on this, seems a way to steal some Limited games.
Also that it didn't require a creature to just sit in play for a turn saying "please don't kill me as I'm all in on this really fragile strategy, and my deck does nothing if you break it up".
The Scale Up plan with this requires just as many moving pieces as killing with a T1 Glistener Elf, so I don't really see it being a thing as Infect is hardly tearing up Modern right now. There is too much interaction for T1 creatures, something that will only increase in a world of Ragavan, and there is even Force of Negation to protect against the combo. The problem with such a deck is there's no plan B, you are a pure glass cannon deck, your deck just completely folds and does nothing if your opponent breaks it up, those decks just don't cut it in Modern anymore.
Who are those people exactly?
Companion was called as busted on day 0, especially Lurrus, people thought it was broken the second it was spoiled. Dungeons just looks like over costed limited chaff (and this isn't even good in limited). A lot of people would have to be very wrong for dungeons to be broken. Dungeons problems also compound, as a mechanic it's one that demands a critical mass of good dungeon cards. Think of like Adventures from Eldraine, without both the pushed Adventures and great 1 mana payoff the mechanic wouldn't have seen the light of day. I don't think there's been a playable dungeon card revealed so far, and this becomes a bigger problem when you could envisage maybe an average dungeon card seeing play if it was in an otherwise powerful shell, but that shell looks very unlikely to exist, making them all just unplayable when they have costed the mechanic like dungeons will be a very real thing.
The problem is if the set is then just under powered chaff then it will sell really badly. The only thing I don't have pulse with as I have no interest in it myself is whether the D&D aspect will really sell the set. Underpowered sets normally sell really badly though, and doing this so soon after Modern Horizons 2 just makes me think this even more.
If I had any faith in play design I would believe maybe I am just massively underrating dungeons, but given they have got it wrong time after time the last few years I really don't, so I more think they have just massively overrated the mechanic and there isn't a single playable dungeon card shown so far.
You are kidding right? This won't be anywhere near any format Ragavan is running loose.
Think it's always hard to break a card like Wish in Standard. It's basically demanding quick mana as otherwise where are you getting the mana to cast both Wish and whatever you fetched from your sideboard in the same turn?
Where this has potential is older formats. Tutors always only tend to see play in combo shells, and this has the potential to be like a 3 mana Demonic Tutor in those decks in the colour where most of the fast mana exists. The obvious immediately is Gifts Storm, but whether it's actually good enough would need to be tested as it is still adding 3 mana to your combo, and many combos are consistent already, it's the hate that hurts, and this doesn't help vs most hate.