I'd love to see a Looting/Flashback themed Chandra from M14:
Chandra, Conjurer of Flame1RR
Planeswalker - Chandra
{+1}: Discard a card. If you do, draw a card.
{ -2}: Target instant or sorcery card in your graveyard gains flashback until end of turn. The flashback cost is equal to its mana cost.
{ -5}: Search your library for any number of instant or sorcery cards and reveal those cards. Shuffle your library, then put them on top of it in any order. {2}
I'd be fine with this, although the ultimate feels lackluster. 3 mana just seems like the sweet spot for a red PW looter (has the same effect as merfolk looter while being harder to remove and having huge lategame upside). Note that under the new rules, +1 almost has to be "you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card." in order to fulfill their you always should be able to +1 a PW, kind of like Ajani.
I want new Chandra to be a 3 mana PW with a +1 red loot (you may discard a card; if you do, draw a card) and an ultimate that is either a one sided sulfuric vortex (target opponent gets an emblem with "You can't gain life. At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose half your rounded up") or a one sided wildfire.
Something like: (new chandra) 1RR
+1: You may discard a card; if you do, draw a card
-X: Deal X damage to each of X target creatures (NOT up to) or players
-5: Target opponent gets an emblem with "You can't gain life. At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose half your rounded up"
2 Loyalty
I ran Infest for quite a while, and ended up cutting it because I like black's other removal options more. It needed to be 1B, or a 2B instant I think to put it on par with Pyroclasm (a card I don't even run anymore because other sweeper/dividable damage options have become so efficient and numerous).
While I agree with you, do you realize how insane an instant speed, splashable infest at <= 3 mana would be? A almost assured 2-for-1 against a reasonable portion of drafters (it straight up kills 30-40% of creatures in the average cube when you account for token generators and the like) that doubles as a very good combat trick - both before and after damage is basically unprintable due to other formats.
I'd seriously consider playing an instant speed infest at 3B (in an unpowered 450) and a sorcery speed one at 2B. Along the same lines, wish they would print something like contagion/incremental blight at a cubable cost without wonky counters.
Redo your spreadsheet with real prices, not assuming depriciation, then you'll find where you went wrong. Also, even the lamest common foil still goes for $0.50; it's just a matter of finding the right buyer.
The prices are real (between Ebay and tcgplayer - no way in hell you get anything higher unless you actually own a store) and I then, at the end, assumed a 80% value on the mythics, 70% value on rares, and 50% value on UCs due to, in various cases: old ones fetching a higher price than the new ones (Goyf, Bob, other new art cases), a much higher supply on the card than is currently available (EDH rares like Doubling Season and Divinity of Pride, short print runs like Mirrodin Rares, and the uncommons having a sizable print run - roughly an extra playset+ of each per case), or just random price shocks.
If you want a better spreadsheet, make it yourself. I stand behind these values for the average person (like me) being able to fetch for the cards.
Wont the foils be much easier to obtain since you get one every pack?
So instead of a 1 foil rare per box we will be average 24*7/36 ~ 4.66 Foil Rares
likewise instead of .16 Foil Mythics per box we will average 24*7/216 = .77 Foil Mythics per box
No, this accounts for that. Think about it like this - with this set, if the foil sheet has the same rarity allocation, 15 packs will contain, on average: 9 foil commons, 3 foil Uncommons, and 1/8th of a foil mythic and 7/8ths of a foil rare. That's where my 1 foil mythic/case and 7 foil rares/case comes from (its actually 1 foil mythic per 120 packs and 1 foil rare per ~17 packs).
This doesn't take into account that each pack is also guaranteed to contain a foil in place of a basic land. Foil copies of staple commons and uncommons can go for $10-15 each, let alone. That can raise the value players will get out of packs by quite a bit depending (especially when you consider it could be a rare or mythic). This alone makes it pretty difficult to come up with an actual estimated value.
Additionally, according to the data available on this page, in the past large sets about always have 15 mythics and 53 rares. We still have a lot of cards left to spoil.
That's a fair point, but you have to treat foils as basically a close to zero value add due to the extreme variance. Assuming the foil sheets have similar rarity to packs (9 C:3 U:0.875 R:0.125 M), there is ~1 Mythic foil per case and ~7 rare foils. As foils will range from 0 (more than half the C/U) to ~200 (Goyf - wild but fun fact that tells you why it's difficult to add foils to EV: a foil Goyf, which on average occurs once every 1800 packs still adds ~ 9 cents to the EV of each individual booster!), the actual EV of the foils is tough to guess. The spreadsheet I've rung up based on what we know so far, assuming everything else is a total zero and assuming some depreciation on everything (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuD5RsqoMNB8dFlqYkN2U2owN2g3cGdFeHg2ZmhzalE&usp=sharing) has pack EV w/o foils at ~$5 and with foils (assuming foils are 2x normal, conservative guess) ~$5.5.
Just to get to break even on MSRP requires an additional $150 in rare value and $20 worth of UCs.
Hate to say it, but EV of the set now rests almost entirely on the back of at least some of Damnation, Mutavault, Thoughtseize, Crucible, Hierarch, and Venser showing up at rare. Based on quick and dirty calcs I've done about what we know, I'd say 4 of those 6 need to show up for the packs to be worth purchasing at MSRP, let alone the absurd prices some retailers are asking.
Don't get me wrong - I bet the set will be awesome to draft/play limited with, but hyping $7 (!) packs and then not backing it up is a tough sell. I don't know what people who are super pumped to open their box are thinking.
Ready - 1GW
Instant
Creatures you control are indestructible this turn. Untap each creature you control.
//
Willing - 1BW
Instant
Creatures you control get deathtouch and lifelink until end of turn.
This is actually really close to cubeable IMO, just too color intensive. A vault of the archangels you don't see coming attached to wrath protection + surprise blockers has A LOT of versatility and power.
Lyev Skyknight seems rather harsh being :symw::symu::1mana: taking up the slot that Geist of Saint Traft lives in. Not only that but you take up 8 slots for 3 cmc and 4 for 4 cmc. Seems a bit top heavy imho. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying it bothers me. Convince me why I want 4 more dudes taking up Geist of Saint Traft's 3 cmc slot please. The style deck already has a lower than normal land count as it is in it's current form. Maybe you are correct and I just am not seeing something.
In all honesty, I won a tournament, then wrote an article discussing what I felt were the merits of the deck. If none of that convinced you, I'm unsure what would. It's a sad day when 8 3s and 4 4s is a "high curve" in a non-balls out aggro shell. Skyknight and Geist aren't exclusive of one another and in fact complement each other very well, with Skyknights clearing the way for the Geist in subsequent turns.
If you want to argue that UWR tempo is better, I can get behind that. I prefer a slightly lower power level and more consistency (my deck wants to play evasive threats and clear a way for them, a clear focus), but the UWR list is far more inherently powerful if the mana issues are resolved.
I won with tempo at States; the deck is still very real. I wouldn't make too many changes to what I played and was very happy with the list. Geist, Snapcaster, Restoration Angel, and Skyknight just provide too powerful of a core not to play. Not enough people are playing flyers, and if you can buy a turn or two it isn't terribly difficult to 20 them.
I do like the list that showed up in Japan/at the SCG open this last weekend, but I'm not sold on the manabase personally. YMMV obviously, it worked for Todd Anderson.
Having actually tested Deathrite Shaman in Pod, it is also very good against Jund in addition to improving many of the other close matchups. If they ever print a way to stop the Tron rampage online, Melira will be in a good spot.
I feel like this card (while awesome) doesn't do what unpowered lists want in the BG section. As the importance of faster answers go up (power), this card becomes better. In an unpowered list (like my 450), the importance of versatility and being a broader answer is a little more important. I'm not cubing this or putrefy, but I think putrefy would edge this out in my slightly slower cube environment.
I don't think many people are evaluating the card how it is going to be played. You'll be in G/B/(x), and so this is a potential t4 threat (totally fine on t5 too, ofc). You're in a pair of colors that excel at stabilizing by killing creatures and clogging the board. Most commonly, I think she will either:
a) +1 into a board where you are slightly disadvantaged in order to deter an attack, then you untap and go into vindicate mode while getting to play things to protect her
b) -3 into a board where you are facing down 1-2 large threats (a Jace/Elspeth, a powerful 4 drop, etc), leaving your opponent with no good way to deal with her without incurring even more disadvantage
The only time she is "bad" (you know, as bad as a 5 mana pulse+ can be) is when you are facing down a horde of small threats and you're way behind anyway. Not many things were digging you out of that hole, and she at least gets you started there.
I'd be fine with this, although the ultimate feels lackluster. 3 mana just seems like the sweet spot for a red PW looter (has the same effect as merfolk looter while being harder to remove and having huge lategame upside). Note that under the new rules, +1 almost has to be "you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card." in order to fulfill their you always should be able to +1 a PW, kind of like Ajani.
Something like: (new chandra) 1RR
+1: You may discard a card; if you do, draw a card
-X: Deal X damage to each of X target creatures (NOT up to) or players
-5: Target opponent gets an emblem with "You can't gain life. At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose half your rounded up"
2 Loyalty
While I agree with you, do you realize how insane an instant speed, splashable infest at <= 3 mana would be? A almost assured 2-for-1 against a reasonable portion of drafters (it straight up kills 30-40% of creatures in the average cube when you account for token generators and the like) that doubles as a very good combat trick - both before and after damage is basically unprintable due to other formats.
I'd seriously consider playing an instant speed infest at 3B (in an unpowered 450) and a sorcery speed one at 2B. Along the same lines, wish they would print something like contagion/incremental blight at a cubable cost without wonky counters.
The prices are real (between Ebay and tcgplayer - no way in hell you get anything higher unless you actually own a store) and I then, at the end, assumed a 80% value on the mythics, 70% value on rares, and 50% value on UCs due to, in various cases: old ones fetching a higher price than the new ones (Goyf, Bob, other new art cases), a much higher supply on the card than is currently available (EDH rares like Doubling Season and Divinity of Pride, short print runs like Mirrodin Rares, and the uncommons having a sizable print run - roughly an extra playset+ of each per case), or just random price shocks.
If you want a better spreadsheet, make it yourself. I stand behind these values for the average person (like me) being able to fetch for the cards.
No, this accounts for that. Think about it like this - with this set, if the foil sheet has the same rarity allocation, 15 packs will contain, on average: 9 foil commons, 3 foil Uncommons, and 1/8th of a foil mythic and 7/8ths of a foil rare. That's where my 1 foil mythic/case and 7 foil rares/case comes from (its actually 1 foil mythic per 120 packs and 1 foil rare per ~17 packs).
That's a fair point, but you have to treat foils as basically a close to zero value add due to the extreme variance. Assuming the foil sheets have similar rarity to packs (9 C:3 U:0.875 R:0.125 M), there is ~1 Mythic foil per case and ~7 rare foils. As foils will range from 0 (more than half the C/U) to ~200 (Goyf - wild but fun fact that tells you why it's difficult to add foils to EV: a foil Goyf, which on average occurs once every 1800 packs still adds ~ 9 cents to the EV of each individual booster!), the actual EV of the foils is tough to guess. The spreadsheet I've rung up based on what we know so far, assuming everything else is a total zero and assuming some depreciation on everything (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuD5RsqoMNB8dFlqYkN2U2owN2g3cGdFeHg2ZmhzalE&usp=sharing) has pack EV w/o foils at ~$5 and with foils (assuming foils are 2x normal, conservative guess) ~$5.5.
Just to get to break even on MSRP requires an additional $150 in rare value and $20 worth of UCs.
Don't get me wrong - I bet the set will be awesome to draft/play limited with, but hyping $7 (!) packs and then not backing it up is a tough sell. I don't know what people who are super pumped to open their box are thinking.
It's actually fairly common with the M1X sets. Both Day of Judgement and Birds of Paradise have been buy a box promos in these sets.
Instant
Creatures you control are indestructible this turn. Untap each creature you control.
//
Willing - 1BW
Instant
Creatures you control get deathtouch and lifelink until end of turn.
This is actually really close to cubeable IMO, just too color intensive. A vault of the archangels you don't see coming attached to wrath protection + surprise blockers has A LOT of versatility and power.
/boggle, which world are you living in, exactly? Awesome in cube, awesome in constructed...
In all honesty, I won a tournament, then wrote an article discussing what I felt were the merits of the deck. If none of that convinced you, I'm unsure what would. It's a sad day when 8 3s and 4 4s is a "high curve" in a non-balls out aggro shell. Skyknight and Geist aren't exclusive of one another and in fact complement each other very well, with Skyknights clearing the way for the Geist in subsequent turns.
If you want to argue that UWR tempo is better, I can get behind that. I prefer a slightly lower power level and more consistency (my deck wants to play evasive threats and clear a way for them, a clear focus), but the UWR list is far more inherently powerful if the mana issues are resolved.
I do like the list that showed up in Japan/at the SCG open this last weekend, but I'm not sold on the manabase personally. YMMV obviously, it worked for Todd Anderson.
Agreed. Unless you cut deed, in which case...
a) +1 into a board where you are slightly disadvantaged in order to deter an attack, then you untap and go into vindicate mode while getting to play things to protect her
b) -3 into a board where you are facing down 1-2 large threats (a Jace/Elspeth, a powerful 4 drop, etc), leaving your opponent with no good way to deal with her without incurring even more disadvantage
The only time she is "bad" (you know, as bad as a 5 mana pulse+ can be) is when you are facing down a horde of small threats and you're way behind anyway. Not many things were digging you out of that hole, and she at least gets you started there.