- Arborea
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Member for 14 years, 8 months, and 14 days
Last active Sun, Aug, 4 2019 18:15:59
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Apr 17, 2018Arborea posted a message on The Limited Archetypes of DominariaDid you know that Wizards of the Coast linked to this article from their site? Have they forgiven Salvation for rancored_elf and the rest? I thought they even sued someone at one point.Posted in: Articles
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Aug 25, 2017Arborea posted a message on Magic Story: Alara to AmonkhetI know the story is still technically ongoing, but it makes less than no sense to me that Bolas would just tear down Amonkhet once he has a working Eternal factory, not to mention the years he spent setting himself up as the God-Pharaoh. I don't believe there is such a thing as "enough" when it comes to mindless killing machines - and more importantly, I don't believe that Bolas does. And since he's lost his godlike power, you'd think he might hold on to the one place that gives him the respect he feels is his due.Posted in: Articles
I also spotted another curious thing when I was looking at my Empyrial Archangel playmat. They decided for Theros that Elspeth's sword came from there and was made by Purphoros, yet it has the same design as the standard swords on Bant. Many of the angels are shown with similar swords, as is Rafiq of the Many. Now, I don't believe there's any storyline significance to this - I think they just wanted to use Elspeth in Theros and decided to try and make a connection between her and the plane, and they were typically careless and forgot what they had established only four years before. -
May 29, 2011Arborea posted a message on ANGELFIRE - Boros CasualThis is the one from the Casual forum before, yes? Looking good.Posted in: Rowan Blog
As you've noted, there are a few mono-colored cards with guild watermarks. Leave No Trace and Wojek Embermage spring to mind, although both are the kind of card that's either very good or rather sub-par. -
Mar 1, 2010Arborea posted a message on Johnny is wrong, or why R&D's player demographics are not equally valid viewpoints@bloggerPosted in: Let them hate me, as long as they fear me
Have I ever told you that you're an idiot?
Well, you are.
Flame infraction. --Binary -
Feb 26, 2010Arborea posted a message on FML, or, quitting facebook. . . So basically your post is "I'm a shallow dick and all my friends think so?"Posted in: 1-800-cyanide line
Yeah, dude, FYL. You suck. Quit Magic too, I just read one of your posts in the UW control forum and I wish I hadn't. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I would welcome Lightning Strike or Searing Spear (if we're emphasizing Chandra's straight fire!) coming back to Standard, but control is far from dead.
And for another thing, I remember very well when Rise of the Eldrazi was the newest set, and the core sets were full of Lightning Bolt and Doom Blade and Mana Leak. Everybody was all over these forums saying "Well, whatever card we're discussing just dies to Doom Blade, so you'd better not be caught dead playing any creature that doesn't have at least one sorcery stapled to it". I never want to return to those days. Never.
I'll quote Melissa DeTora from the first ever Play Design article last Friday, and point out that more powerful does not necessarily equal more fun.
I'll now open the floor for everyone present to flame and e-bury me as they see fit.
This guy also reminds me a little of Working Stiff and Goblin Mime from Unhinged, because I was looking through my Un-cards the other day now that the third Un-set has officially been announced. It's funny that we have actual Grizzly Bears in red and black now. (Frazzled Editor is still like the best Grizzly Bears ever, though!)
To be honest, I'm not certain any more just how many of the new creatures are on Mana Leak's power level. We've stepped a long way down from the days of Baneslayer Angel and the Titans.
I know that era of Standard had quite a diversity of strategies and approaches, but I think of the people on this forum and others lecturing each other about "Doom Blade/Mana Leak/etc are just so efficient, you can't even look at a creature that isn't outlandishly efficient and/or doesn't have a sorcery stapled to it". I don't think we should go back to those days; perhaps we have gone too far from them now, but there needs to be a middle ground. Murder or Unlicensed Disintegration seem like good baselines in their area, and I think it also allows for more interesting and less purely-efficient removal and counterspells to see play.
I don't think I can defend that three-mana Lightning Strike (for Standard - it's okay for limited), though - something like Lightning Strike or Smother is a much better way to encourage bigger creatures than printing Baneslayer Angel or Primeval Titan
Mana Leak is a lot more like a hard counterspell than people often give it credit for. How many decks just have three extra mana lying around with any regularity?
I'd be interested to hear from anybody who's played Mana Leak in competitive Magic more than I have (note: I haven't played competitive constructed for most of the last decade). How often does anybody have three generic mana to pay and prevent their spell from being countered? It seems like that'd be very disruptive well into the mid- or even late game; don't most decks usually like to use as much mana as they can each turn?
Yeah, they draw Chandra really inconsistently. She looks beautiful on the Kaladesh planeswalker deck's box, but really odd on her M12 card. I don't know what the deal is with that.
Mentor of the Meek gets pretty crazy with Elspeth Tirel. It sounds like a good way to make yourself public enemy number one in multiplayer.
Your post blew my mind - I can't believe how long it's been since some of those cards were in Standard.
I can't help but feel this is why Standard has sucked - it's missing its core (its heart).
I remember when Rise of the Eldrazi first came out, my first thought on seeing the totem armor mechanic was that it was a good way to innovate on auras, but nobody would look at it regardless of what it said because of things like Back to Nature and Gatekeeper of Malakir. There have been a number of times recently when I was surprised they printed an obvious hoser of that type so close to a strategy that was supposed to be being encouraged. And more broadly, are we going to go back to everyone going "Well, it just dies to Doom Blade, so I'm not going to play any creature that doesn't have a sorcery stapled to it"?
But on the other hand, Standard with Rise of the Eldrazi had a diversity of deck types and play styles, so what do I know?
I hope they've learned from Unglued, where some of the cards felt over-engineered. (I know people have also pointed out how you can use things like Number Crunch for griefing, but that's partly on design and partly on the players.)
I am a little concerned that we'll be oversaturated with full-art lands, but I guess they need to boost revenue across the board.
On the plus side, that new department was created because they've been really, really bad at assessing competitive formats recently, so perhaps Bolas is actually pretty good.
Something Rosewater didn't mention, for obvious reasons, is that core sets also give you (the potential of) something new to play with even in a year where the expansion has a gimmick that isn't interesting to you, or that Rosewater and his friends simply didn't design well. That core gameplay, if you like, has always been a reason they're my overall favorites. For me personally, as an example, the Eighth Edition Rollout and its acknowledgment of so much of Magic's history was a welcome diversion from the letdown of Scourge being far less dragon-y than they had led us to believe.
That's a fair point. I'm thinking of the differences between, say, a Kamigawa-Ravnica era Hand in Hand deck (which was basically a goodstuff deck) and a Ravnica-Time Spiral era Whitemane Lion deck. Whitemane Lion was not a top-level competitive card in that era, but a deck based on that effect plays differently in different matchups - against blue it leverages flash, against aggro it leans on the card advantage from comes-into-play abilities, etc. One of the things that turned me off about some card pools was that every deck seemed to play in basically the same way.
I think this depends a lot on the designers and what sort of range of effects they manage to put in a Standard cardpool. It should even be possible occasionally to have decks that are the same color but play completely differently (like Hand in Hand versus Whitemane Lion).