I'm not sold on Wolfly Valor. Vigilance on the enchanted creature was very significant, and it was in a set with Populate (not that Knight tokens were the ideal thing to populate, but still).
I'm a little concerned about the spot that green is in. Prey Upon has always been very good and Ulvenwald Captive seems great (Voyaging Satyr with Monstrosity? Yes please), but the high value of both is dependent on having other quality creatures to ramp into and fight with, and those seem to be really missing. Backwoods Survivalists is perfectly fine, but it's only conditionally better than Summit Prowler, which means green really lacks an generically strong body at common. Maybe if green had good common Emerge enablers I'd think, well, you can be an Emerge deck with It of the Horrid Swarm for mid-game beef, or you can be Delirium with Backwoods Survivalists, but all the good Emerge enablers are blue.
I'm just concerned that green may end up in the position of providing good support cards (Captive and Prey Upon) to decks relying on other colors for their bread and butter, which if true would make me hesitant to start a draft in green.
I mean, they're a fantasy invention, so they can have whatever geometry and physics the plot calls for, right?
Fantasy invention isn't what I would call it. It's something from China, though I don't know the whole details of how they are supposed to work. Wasn't saying they had to work the same, just saying how they are supposed to work here.
The term "ley line" is, as far as I know, from the 20th century, and the fnatasy-relevant understanding of it dates from the 1960s.
Also, even if after the events of Eldritch Moon the human population of Innistrad drops to ~1,000,000 (a number I'd consider low), they're perfectly fine from a species survival standpoint. The human population of actual, real-world planet earth went through a catastrophic bottleneck about 70,000 years ago where there may have been as few as 10,000 humans left alive (!), and it's not like those survivors didn't have large predators and dangerous conditions to contend with.
Obviously our species recovered; a million individuals is positively luxurious for keeping the species alive. Now, if Emrakul really does result in most of the population being killed off, Innistrad's civilization is likely to collapse and take a long time to recover, but the humans shouldn't die off.
Also, we don't really know how ubiquitous Emrakul's mutations are. We know they're widespread, spreading through leylines across the plane, but we don't know enough about that leyline network to say how dense it is. It's possible that there may be large numbers of people living in areas not immediately affected by Emrakul, who'll be safe from her influence and her spawn as long as she's imprisoned quickly enough.
Oh, and it case there was any doubt, none of these are actually colorless. There isn't a single one I'd ever want to play off-color; paying "full retail" for an emerge creature is an in-case-of-flood backup plan. I think the spot for these is that they're always played on-color, with ~ one emerge creature being okay if you're not drafting Emerge as an archetype, and more allowed only if you're actively enabling them, much like most of the Delve cards.
I hope it's not backseat modding for me to remind everyone to keep the temperature of the discussion down and avoid getting personal. Obviously this aspect of the story touches on some characters people are very invested in and brings up some ethical concepts about which people have strong opinions.
I think that once you've learned that Nahiri's plan didn't include a hidden "stop Emrakul" component, virtually everyone would agree that what she's doing is horrible and wrong, even though many will still feel some sympathy for her because of the back story that led to this point.
However, I do think the "trolley problem" model of the story still raises some intellectually interesting issues.
If Nahiri had been trying to stop Emrakul in addition to getting revenge, the equivalent trolley problem would be something like one track running off into the distance with someone tied to it every mile or so, and another track that runs over Sorin's mom and then stops. Utilitarian ethics would say that switching the trolley to the short track is still the right thing to do, even if the main reason you're actually doing it is to hurt Sorin. Other views on ethics might make that more complicated, i.e., how should a really awful motive affect our judgment of something that ultimately harms fewer people?
As it turns out, though, the relevant trolley scenario is more like two long tracks covered with a sequence of people (or maybe a giant multidimensional loop with everyone in existence tied to it at some point ) and switching the trolley just determines whether it runs over John Doe or Sorin's mom first. A utilitarian argument (at least a very simplistic one) might hold that the choice is ethically neutral, but I think most of us think it matters enormously why you throw the switch and run over Sorin's mom or not, which is kind of academically interesting. Is motive a "tie breaker" when the choices are otherwise equal? Is the choice that harms fewer people correct regardless of motive, or can greater harm be preferable to less harm with bad motives? Not that I think anyone could extract a reasonable answer from all that that somehow excuses Nahiri (hypotheticals aside, I imagine the vast majority of people find her actual actions wrong), but it's an interesting (if ridiculous) thing to think about.
I mean, people happily played Youthful Scholar to enable Exploit, right? Enlightened Maniac is at lower rarity and, to me, seems at least as good. Yes, less raw card advantage, but the tempo hit you took from playing a 4-mana 2/2 that you didn't want to block with was atrocious, and this lets you actually use the relevant body while still getting the sacrifice enabler.
I was surprised that green doesn't seem to have good common enablers; with Emerge seemingly being the u/g draft archetype, it's kind of weird that you're so dependent on just one of the two colors to enable your centerpiece mechanic.
That said, the two common blue enablers seem really solid to me. I think Enlightened Maniac in particular may be a lot better than it looks. 4 mana makes literally any Emerge cost quite affordable. And while a 4-mana 3/2 isn't something you'd play on its own, it is large enough to trade with most 3-4 mana attackers, which means it negates most of the tempo cost of spending turn 4 setting up an emerge card.
Wretched Gryff seems good because it honestly doesn't need much enabling. If you have a good enabler it's obviously great, but with the cantrip and the relatively cheap Emerge, sacrificing a regular 2- or 3-drop that's not doing too much isn't bad, so it's unlikely to get stuck in your hand.
Definitely should have dealt two damage. Worst common of the set right here.
Not really, no. This is at worst a "meh" draft common; there will almost certainly be at least one or two worse commons per color.
But this does seem like an odd preview choice, and this is coming from someone who really, really likes that they're previewing draft commons alongside the other cards this spoiler season. That's because I like getting an early peek at the cards that will define the draft format, but this looks more like late-pick filler, so... eh?
I respect your limited evaluation a lot, so I'm surprised to hear you say "late-pick filler." Out of curiosity, about when do you think it was correct to take Blisterstick Shaman, and what would you say the main differences are with this card?
I don't think I ever first picked a Blisterstick Shaman, and I'd have been pretty unhappy to do so, but it was a good common for sure. If I started out in red I'd be happy to take one, say, third-pick, and if I saw one around sixth pick I'd see that as a modest red signal.
However, I think Blisterstick is generally better; the ability to hit for twice as much damage (when your opponent starts slow or gets their creatures killed and you go on offense) is, IMO, a little better than the devil token threatening to trade with two x/1s if your opponent attacks with either, as the latter comes up less.
Most importantly, 1-damage pings where MUCH better than normal in Scars block. All five colored mana myr, Plague Myr, Plague Stinger, Necropede, Accorder Paladin, the Myrsmith cycle, etc, etc... there were just a ton of valuable things to kill with one damage. I don't expect ping effects to be remotely as good in EMN, because that was pretty unusual, but if they are of course devil tokens get so much better.
Definitely should have dealt two damage. Worst common of the set right here.
Not really, no. This is at worst a "meh" draft common; there will almost certainly be at least one or two worse commons per color.
But this does seem like an odd preview choice, and this is coming from someone who really, really likes that they're previewing draft commons alongside the other cards this spoiler season. That's because I like getting an early peek at the cards that will define the draft format, but this looks more like late-pick filler, so... eh?
The artbook only states that she claimed that Sorin could die for Innistrad.
Wait, so that bit is in the art book? I thought that we'd confirmed that wasn't in there as more people got their hands on the book, i.e., that the original poster who claimed Nahiri wanted Sorin to sacrifice himself for Innistrad made it up/misremembered it.
People are incredibly, almost comically, bad at telling when art has a lot of "computer generated" or "CGI" elements. I think a lot of people genuinely think that bright color = computer generated effect.
So that kind of sticks a pin in "Nahiri had a bigger/noble plan".
Yep, assuming this version turns out to be accurate, that pretty well removes any uncertainty from Nahiri = villain (in the "present day" part of the story anyway). And it probably is accurate since it's in the art book, though I guess to be 100% sure we'll have to wait for the actual story, given the story errors (or maybe changes?) we saw in the Zendikar art book.
Y'all do realize the OP asked for your specific opinion on the matter? And not to argue out whether relativism or absolutism is the only moral code to live by? It was just trying to see what other people thought about it and that was it, ya know?
Give your opinion and move on. I do personally appreciate some of your arguments, but writing books to try and persuade someone else's opinion on a fictional matter is not helping anyone. Tolerate other people's opinions and move on.
Honestly I feel like we need some surrealist arguments to lighten up the mood.
Nahiri is the real hero because she is furthering the Beeble overlords' plan for Multiverse domination by sending Emrakul to take out the Sorin, the one coordinating the Ouphe terrorists to hamper them on Dominaria.
I posed some specific questions just to get the ball rolling; my reason for starting the thread was that this was something that a lot of people clearly wanted to discuss/argue about (from a variety of different angles), and I thought a thread dedicated to the whole Nahiri topic seemed like a good idea.
I'm just concerned that green may end up in the position of providing good support cards (Captive and Prey Upon) to decks relying on other colors for their bread and butter, which if true would make me hesitant to start a draft in green.
Obviously our species recovered; a million individuals is positively luxurious for keeping the species alive. Now, if Emrakul really does result in most of the population being killed off, Innistrad's civilization is likely to collapse and take a long time to recover, but the humans shouldn't die off.
Also, we don't really know how ubiquitous Emrakul's mutations are. We know they're widespread, spreading through leylines across the plane, but we don't know enough about that leyline network to say how dense it is. It's possible that there may be large numbers of people living in areas not immediately affected by Emrakul, who'll be safe from her influence and her spawn as long as she's imprisoned quickly enough.
I think that once you've learned that Nahiri's plan didn't include a hidden "stop Emrakul" component, virtually everyone would agree that what she's doing is horrible and wrong, even though many will still feel some sympathy for her because of the back story that led to this point.
However, I do think the "trolley problem" model of the story still raises some intellectually interesting issues.
If Nahiri had been trying to stop Emrakul in addition to getting revenge, the equivalent trolley problem would be something like one track running off into the distance with someone tied to it every mile or so, and another track that runs over Sorin's mom and then stops. Utilitarian ethics would say that switching the trolley to the short track is still the right thing to do, even if the main reason you're actually doing it is to hurt Sorin. Other views on ethics might make that more complicated, i.e., how should a really awful motive affect our judgment of something that ultimately harms fewer people?
As it turns out, though, the relevant trolley scenario is more like two long tracks covered with a sequence of people (or maybe a giant multidimensional loop with everyone in existence tied to it at some point
That said, the two common blue enablers seem really solid to me. I think Enlightened Maniac in particular may be a lot better than it looks. 4 mana makes literally any Emerge cost quite affordable. And while a 4-mana 3/2 isn't something you'd play on its own, it is large enough to trade with most 3-4 mana attackers, which means it negates most of the tempo cost of spending turn 4 setting up an emerge card.
Wretched Gryff seems good because it honestly doesn't need much enabling. If you have a good enabler it's obviously great, but with the cantrip and the relatively cheap Emerge, sacrificing a regular 2- or 3-drop that's not doing too much isn't bad, so it's unlikely to get stuck in your hand.
However, I think Blisterstick is generally better; the ability to hit for twice as much damage (when your opponent starts slow or gets their creatures killed and you go on offense) is, IMO, a little better than the devil token threatening to trade with two x/1s if your opponent attacks with either, as the latter comes up less.
Most importantly, 1-damage pings where MUCH better than normal in Scars block. All five colored mana myr, Plague Myr, Plague Stinger, Necropede, Accorder Paladin, the Myrsmith cycle, etc, etc... there were just a ton of valuable things to kill with one damage. I don't expect ping effects to be remotely as good in EMN, because that was pretty unusual, but if they are of course devil tokens get so much better.
But this does seem like an odd preview choice, and this is coming from someone who really, really likes that they're previewing draft commons alongside the other cards this spoiler season. That's because I like getting an early peek at the cards that will define the draft format, but this looks more like late-pick filler, so... eh?