The Dismember Test is valid when you are relying solely on a single creature to carry you to victory; Control decks that played Baneslayer Angel did so because she could race comfortably with Lifelink, and was difficult to kill in combat since she had both First Strike and protection from two other tribes of big beefy flyers. Dismember made Baneslayer much weaker since any deck would pay 4 life and one mana to destroy such a powerful win condition at instant speed and low mana cost.
Therefore, the Dismember Test describes a meta where you cannot rely on a singular win condition that has a toughness of 5 or less: even decks that don't maindeck Dismember can grab it out of the sideboard to get an advantage in games 2 and 3. On the other hand, aggressive decks, particularly those that run red and it's associated burn, view their key creatures being destroyed as an acceptable loss to essentially deal 4 damage to the dome.
I'll throw in Uril, the Miststalker. He's a 5/5 for 5 with Troll-shroud, giving it the size to survive non-Wrath sweepers while having the means to dodge all the destroy effects flying around lately. That's a powerful ability that's just too good to ignore, IMO.
I wonder, if a deck can emerge with a touch of landsearch to abuse the universal swampiness with landwalkers for a new generation of Green Agro-Evasion decks.
If a Timeshifted version of Armageddon, it had better be Green. If WoTC is screwing the color pie so badly for the 'cool' factor, then share the love with Green. It's one of the ways they can soothe the sting Psionic Blast for me.
First, they print Utopia Vow. It made sense, and a step forward in green's deph as a color.
Now they print Damnation as a black analouge to Wrath, word for word. One step forward, two steps back. I wonder if WoTC really knows what it's doing. I really do. We'll just have to wait and see.
Alright, this is a quick question about something that might come up in the future, and I want to be prepared. What happens when a Blood Moon is in play, and someone plays a karooland like Izzet Boilerworks? Does the come-into-play thing still trigger, or does Blood Moon's overwriting take effect before it matters?
Personally, run 4 tops. It's more dangerous to not draw a top and have to rawdog out your landsearchers and win conditions, than it is to draw 2 tops and shuffle one away with one of 16 maindeck shuffle effects, not including the Tooth and Nail which wins games.
Also, how much mileage do people get out of Eternal Witness? I find it that we don't really need to recur things very often unless we come up against Control (which we whip with tons of tron-searchers/land accceleration and outpower them with Slavers and LD from Reap and Titan), and 1 toughness means it's less than a speedbump against agro decks.
Also, inspiration comes to me in the form of Urza's Factory main or sideboarded against Black disruption. They can't extract it, they can't make us discard it, and they rarely can destroy it, while we can always find it with our landsearchers or just Top-digging it. It just stays there and taunts them with an endless march of 2/2 Assembly-Workers to gum up the ground. Is it a good idea, or is something in the vast Extended cardpool creeping up to me from behind to eat me alive?
Stonewood invocation is 4 mana for "Counter your removal spell, my creature absolutely doesn't die this turn, uncounterably and unable to be shot down in response. AND take an extra 5 to the dome."
Except Wrath of God. Wrath solves all your problems. That's a big part of it, really, since Green has few efficient ways of dealing with the gold standard of removal, probably the best and universally played removal in all Standard and Extended formats, ever. Black can reaminate, Blue counters or bounces the important creature, White IS the one wrathing, and Red has the best backup to an agressive creaturebase, ever. Green? Still sobbing in the corner. Green also has to hold back 4 mana, which translates into it's best creatures, and has few ways to gain card advantage.
Do I dispute Stonewood Invocation is good? No. Is it enough to make Green a truly independent color? Not on it's own. Green still has to play second fiddle, because it's creatures are still too vulnerable without you having to play reactive spells, and doesn't have enough ways to get an advantage outside of combat that aren't vastly overcosted creatures that require additional input to be even relevant.
Quote from Wildfire »
Also, green has Avoid fate, which stops removal for a single mana. And plaxmanta and mystic snake if you run blue, both of which can prevent their removal spells and give you a creaturely boost in the process.
Please. Avoid Fate is as playable as it was when it was first printed. Translation: it's still unplayable. Also, Plaxmanta and Mystic Snake are blue spells, make no mistake. They have absolutely nothing to do with green, the only reason it's around is because as 'creatures', they must have some dash of green in it. Plaxmanta is blue to begin with, and Mystic Snake has double blue and only a single green in it's casting cost.
Quote from Wildfire »
White's gotten loads of color bleeding stuff. Look at everything it has that's dominating right now: Condemn is efficient creature removal, black's domain. Akroma has haste. Resurection and debtor's knell are reanimation. Disenchant is green's naturalize. And so forth.
And that's the kind of thing I want to see Green have. White has deph, Green doesn't. What does it do? Green = big stupid creatures, creature based spells, and acceleration/fixing slavery to other colors. Other colors will splash for pure spells of other colors (eg. Solar Pox goes into blue for Compulsive Research, Blue Snow Control sometimes dips into red for Sked, etc.). Green is regulated to either manaslave duty, or played when a gold card *coughplaxmantaSSSmysticsnakecough* has the goods a deck wants. You'll never see other colors splash into green for, Richard Garfield preserve, mono green creatures, in the color that is supposed to be all about creatures. Blasphemy! Oh dear me no, that could never happen. It's completely unnatural. [/sarcasm]
Can you imagine playing a Glare deck, one of the most green-intensive decks around, without the Glare? I rest my case.
And pretty much every card dies to a 1UU counterspell. What's your point?
Mostly that answers to Green's creatures are too easy to find in the current format. Other colors can survive on their own merits in general, but green will always have to rely on other colors for it's Oumph. In Standard, White has Proclaimation (and Wrath, securing it as a viable color in any metagame), Blue has Snow Control, Black has it's Control variants, Red has it's burn/sligh, green is.... nowhere, as usual. They aren't really high on the list for competition, but they do exist. Except for Green.
And don't say anything about Green ripping off the other colors. Take for example, Meloku, the token producer, which is a green trait. Or how about Teferi's instant-hating powers, which is also green (see City of Solitude and Dosan the Falling Leaf). I don't begrudge Teferi his awesome powers, but it fustrates me things that should be green are shipped to other colors all the time. Ohran Viper is a step in the right direction. Green is the color of creatures: it should get more of the best creatures available, darnit!
Except for the fact they all DIE too every little 2-3 mana removal spell in the format.
4 mana is an awful lot to hold back for removal, which is nearly always cheaper. Of course, the probable 5 damage to the dome helps a lot... Then again, removal comes in packs of 8 or more, while there can only be 4 Stonewood Invocations.
In fact, the standard answer should be "insane tech". Time Walk is almost always a good idea, especially at 2 mana against a Blue control deck tapping out.
You know, I'm getting a bit curious about your Cloudpost build of Tooth and Nail, Devious. Mind if you post it for us to see? It would be a nice change of pace from the standard T+N decks that hasn't exactly changed from the introduction of Time Spiral.
Therefore, the Dismember Test describes a meta where you cannot rely on a singular win condition that has a toughness of 5 or less: even decks that don't maindeck Dismember can grab it out of the sideboard to get an advantage in games 2 and 3. On the other hand, aggressive decks, particularly those that run red and it's associated burn, view their key creatures being destroyed as an acceptable loss to essentially deal 4 damage to the dome.
The Auramancy is just sugar on the top.
I wonder, if a deck can emerge with a touch of landsearch to abuse the universal swampiness with landwalkers for a new generation of Green Agro-Evasion decks.
We had to live with Ravager Affinity for a few (read: too many) months, and we know how that turned out. We'll have to live with this too.
Now they print Damnation as a black analouge to Wrath, word for word. One step forward, two steps back. I wonder if WoTC really knows what it's doing. I really do. We'll just have to wait and see.
Thanks in advance.
Card-tags, please! Read the Forum Guidelines and this announcement!
[card]Blood Moon[/card] = Blood Moon
Izzet Boilerworks
- Craven
Also, how much mileage do people get out of Eternal Witness? I find it that we don't really need to recur things very often unless we come up against Control (which we whip with tons of tron-searchers/land accceleration and outpower them with Slavers and LD from Reap and Titan), and 1 toughness means it's less than a speedbump against agro decks.
Also, inspiration comes to me in the form of Urza's Factory main or sideboarded against Black disruption. They can't extract it, they can't make us discard it, and they rarely can destroy it, while we can always find it with our landsearchers or just Top-digging it. It just stays there and taunts them with an endless march of 2/2 Assembly-Workers to gum up the ground. Is it a good idea, or is something in the vast Extended cardpool creeping up to me from behind to eat me alive?
Except Wrath of God. Wrath solves all your problems. That's a big part of it, really, since Green has few efficient ways of dealing with the gold standard of removal, probably the best and universally played removal in all Standard and Extended formats, ever. Black can reaminate, Blue counters or bounces the important creature, White IS the one wrathing, and Red has the best backup to an agressive creaturebase, ever. Green? Still sobbing in the corner. Green also has to hold back 4 mana, which translates into it's best creatures, and has few ways to gain card advantage.
Do I dispute Stonewood Invocation is good? No. Is it enough to make Green a truly independent color? Not on it's own. Green still has to play second fiddle, because it's creatures are still too vulnerable without you having to play reactive spells, and doesn't have enough ways to get an advantage outside of combat that aren't vastly overcosted creatures that require additional input to be even relevant.
Please. Avoid Fate is as playable as it was when it was first printed. Translation: it's still unplayable. Also, Plaxmanta and Mystic Snake are blue spells, make no mistake. They have absolutely nothing to do with green, the only reason it's around is because as 'creatures', they must have some dash of green in it. Plaxmanta is blue to begin with, and Mystic Snake has double blue and only a single green in it's casting cost.
And that's the kind of thing I want to see Green have. White has deph, Green doesn't. What does it do? Green = big stupid creatures, creature based spells, and acceleration/fixing slavery to other colors. Other colors will splash for pure spells of other colors (eg. Solar Pox goes into blue for Compulsive Research, Blue Snow Control sometimes dips into red for Sked, etc.). Green is regulated to either manaslave duty, or played when a gold card *coughplaxmantaSSSmysticsnakecough* has the goods a deck wants. You'll never see other colors splash into green for, Richard Garfield preserve, mono green creatures, in the color that is supposed to be all about creatures. Blasphemy!
Can you imagine playing a Glare deck, one of the most green-intensive decks around, without the Glare? I rest my case.
Mostly that answers to Green's creatures are too easy to find in the current format. Other colors can survive on their own merits in general, but green will always have to rely on other colors for it's Oumph. In Standard, White has Proclaimation (and Wrath, securing it as a viable color in any metagame), Blue has Snow Control, Black has it's Control variants, Red has it's burn/sligh, green is.... nowhere, as usual. They aren't really high on the list for competition, but they do exist. Except for Green.
And don't say anything about Green ripping off the other colors. Take for example, Meloku, the token producer, which is a green trait. Or how about Teferi's instant-hating powers, which is also green (see City of Solitude and Dosan the Falling Leaf). I don't begrudge Teferi his awesome powers, but it fustrates me things that should be green are shipped to other colors all the time. Ohran Viper is a step in the right direction. Green is the color of creatures: it should get more of the best creatures available, darnit!
4 mana is an awful lot to hold back for removal, which is nearly always cheaper. Of course, the probable 5 damage to the dome helps a lot... Then again, removal comes in packs of 8 or more, while there can only be 4 Stonewood Invocations.
*curls up in the corner and has a little cry*
I seemed to recall that he played with a Blue splash, but it appears my memory failed me again after I checked the posts again. Sucks to be me.
I'll try the Cloudpost manabase out sometime. I still think Tron is better for some reason. Gotta test it to be sure though.
Chalice is an interesting card to consider. With our mana capacity, we can shut down other deck's important spells. I'll test it sometime.