What if it was Gating? Like as in Horned Kavu gating?
'buster
Like I said, it could be something with the flavor you mentioned. It wouldn't be the worst but not sure if WotC cares about inter "block" synergy anymore. Extend it to more than creatures and it plays around with the ETB of artifacts and such, helps out modified? Idk, just spitballing.
The white cards will at best have 1 be mono white (maybe a creature). Two shards are UW, 2 are GW, the 2 primary card draw colors. Maro is just being sneaky here imo.
re fading and vanishing: since Wotc says vanishing is a corrected/fixed Fading, I'm betting on the latter vs the former if at all since both are an 8 and 7 on the Storm Scale.
From Nemesis, the free spells counting land types would be interesting given the Triomes but that cycle is technically a color hoser cycle which they don't like.
Prophecy: nothing (no way they do Rhystic).
Invasion: Domain with Triomes? Could turn into 5 color good pile decks but this seems like a shoe-in. I am already going to try and play 5c Lucky Charms anyways.
Planeshift: Gating? Seems unlikely but see above on the disappearing/vanishing story.
Apocalypse: nothing here.
Odyssey: Flashback is too soon; the threshold clue above seems like a red herring so nothing here as well.
Torment: nothing here.
Judgment: Wishes can always just be a thing I guess.
Onslaught: Morph is a no go.
Legions: Everything here is updated/fixed/outdated.
Scourge: Do I need to even mention Storm? Again, the clues above about copies is a red herring imo.
Mirrodin: Entwine is unlikely.
Darksteel: Modular is a no.
Fifth Dawn: Sunburst with triomes could be a thing but unlikely.
Kamigawa block: nothing at all from here since we just had NEO.
Ravnica block: nothing from here, too flavor based except things like Convoke.
Coldsnap: nothing from here.
Time Spiral: Suspend/Split Second are no go.
Planar Chaos: Vanishing.
Future Sight: too many here, I always figured Granduer should have came back with NEO but alas.
Lorwyn: Hideaway is the only realistic one.
Morningtide: none of these fit; Reinforce works with modified creatures?
Shadowmoor/Eventide: Nada here. They don't like the Untap symbol.
Shards block: I think it's fair that they don't want to retread anything here.
Zendikar: Nothing here, landfall is basically evergreen at this point.
they can't have both, they need to sacrifice one of them. it's just going to be another tiny leaders, or brawl, or whatever that other one was where a walker could be your commander with a signature spell, its great in theory but without support it'll go nowhere fast and to get support you have to pull away from modern. that's a difficult balance. there is actually a point where there are TOO many ways to play.
i mean, it happens often enough already where a legacy event doesn't fire because people want to play modern that night, but that doesn't fire because some want standard, but no maybe half of them want to draft, oh whatever **** it lets all play commander. it was brawl night anyway.
Except Pioneer is necessary because Modern is gradually pricing itself out of playability for new/newer players. Or even some older ones. It's a necessary step. I imagine in another ten years or so, they'll do it again.
Thats a reprint policy issue not a format issue
1000000% this. WotC got the exact wrong answer to the Modern problem. Just reprint the damn cards, it's FREE MONEY.
You are correct that Humans isn't tier 0, I didn't realize Spirits topped that quick. To say it's not close however with that small margin of difference?
This card could push it up ala Dredge with chill. This doesn't really help a huge amount with the top decks but does so much splash damage incidental hate against the rest of the field that you'd get a lot of MD free rolls by playing Humans. This definitely would increase metashare in the future and just gives a great tool to a deck that didn't need it.
Scarier thought? Not much downside for Spirits to play this either MD. 😶
Lavinia is probably the dumbest "you don't get to play magic" cards in a long time. Honestly. Slots MD into the tier 0 deck of modern and it affects:
Tron
Burn (rift bolt)
Infect (mutagenic)
Mardu (turn 1 looting, turn 2 souls)
Ad Nauseum (bloom)
Living End
Jund (cascade)
U/x Turns (miracle)
UWx Control (delve, terminus)
Phoenix variants (gut shot)
Hollow One
This is dumb.
She doesn’t stop lingering souls from being cast from the GY. You still pay mana for a flashback spell. Also, she doesn’t kill delve or convoke as long as you cast 1 mana also for the spell.
Someone already answered the souls part I put up. The first ability could potentially stop the others depending on your land count.
Surveil is exactly that. A worse Explore, BUT, it works great in conjunction with the Explore mechanic. I allready have the sultai shell for it so i can't wait to see the cards and feel how they fit together.
Surveil has the advantage of being able to look at more than one card at once, The terrible person that I am wants to see "Surveil 2 then Draw a card" instant for U to see how quickly it gets banned/restricted
We better get the obvious Opt version but man... your version would be amazing, reminds me of Buried Alive being the great Threshold enabler.
Surveil certainly operates on the same spectrum as Explore but certainly has more potential to be much more powerful. I highly doubt we'll see a triple explore card due to clunkiness and being tied to creatures is limiting. It is definitely not a strictly worse version by any means
I think Jump-Start has some legitimate potential. The added cost of discarding a card means that cards with Jump-Start are possibly a little more aggressively costed than your average flashback card, with a little more flexibility than the average retrace card.
Compare Engulfing Flames and Flame Jab. We could conceivably see a Jump-Start spell as a halfway point between the two, something along the lines of:
Engulfing Jab R
Instant
Deal 1 Damage to any Target.
Jump-Start
So, Cheaper than Engulfing Flames to cast a second time, due to the additional cost of discarding a card. At the same time, its still slightly easier to recast than Flame Jab since ANY card can be discarded rather than just a land, although you can only recast it once rather than repeatedly.
Factoring in the ability to use the discard cost to fill your gy, chain future Jump-Start spells, or enable madness cards, there is conceivably some REAL potential within the mechanic.
Winner winner, chicken dinner. Flashback should always be overcosted since it's an instant access recast. Retrace was turning your worst dead cards, lands, into repeatable effects i.e. needs to be overcosted.
I know WotC would want to err on the side of caution here but overcosting is mechanically incorrect; the danger, as always, is in aggressively costing or free.
Haven't posted in about two years...not surprised that Ravnica is what brought me back. Convoke as always is great, Boros is boring as usual (Radiance WAS overcosted as another poster stated but I liked it), Jump-start will be the juice, Surveil is simple, uninspired and powerful while Undergrwoth is another win for Golgari.
From this week's CI, surely this is just a timing misplay?
Q: I control a Leonin Arbiter; my opponent pays 2 for the Arbiter, then activates a Windswept Heath. Can I respond by flashing Restoration Angel and blinking the Arbiter, to make my opponent have to pay another 2 (or not get to search for a land)?
A: You can. When the Arbiter leaves and re-enters the battlefield, it becomes, from the game's perspective, an entirely new object with no memory of or relation to the Arbiter that was on the battlefield before. So although your opponent paid for the ability of that Arbiter, your opponent hasn't paid for the ability of the Arbiter that's on the battlefield now, and will need to pay another or not be able to search.
I don't question the blinking double tax but my understanding was that you could activate something like a fetch, then if it required a payment the game WOULD allow you to activate mana abilities in the middle of the ability resolving to pay for those things. I know there is some other card/ability that references this, it's similar but not quite like Ghostly Prison where you don't have to activate mana abilities prior to announcing attackers. Clarification would be nice.
So the question is can you activate mana abilities and pay the arbiter's tax 'during' the resolution of the ability?
P.S. Found another scenario where this would be relevant: Blood Speaker. Once the ability triggers, if you have to pay the 2 in advance, your opponent could then kill Speaker in response to the trigger after you paid the 2, REALLY hosing you. Obviously killing Speaker in response is a good play regardless but if they can get you to waste 2 mana as well, all the better of course.
The thing about this banning that I feel bad about is that the card in question was much more widely used and enjoyed than cards that have been banned in the past were. Very few people had fun with stuff like Mind over Matter and Memory Jar. But everyone can find a use for Skullclamp. Players at cardshops and kitchen tables around the world are slapping it on everything from Auriok Glaivemaster to Bottle Gnomes to Fallen Angels. And to them the card isn't “broken” or “environment-warping,” but rather only very good and quite fun. I'm sure the card is responsible for making many iffy Friday Night Magic decks into contenders—heck, even a Bird or Dwarf tribal deck can laugh off mass removal with some Skullclamps handy.
Many people have complained on the boards that their “Black-Green Death Cloud Cemetery” or “White Weenie Equipment” decks were ruined by the banning. And to them I apologize. But the Dark Side will always use power for evil, and while I appreciate your desire to employ Skullclamp somewhat fairly, I still say the card is dumb and had to go. Somewhere—maybe not in your store, or in your town—someone else was using Skullclamp more efficiently and to more devastating effect than you were. I'm sure there were kids using Lotus Petal years ago to put out first-turn Warrior en-Kor, and they were left scratching their heads when the Petal was banned. And maybe, just maybe, a guy somewhere was sacrificing Black Lotuses to power out early War Mammoths, and wondered why in the heck Wizards felt the need to create a Restricted List. There will always be casualties in the crossfire, I suppose. I feel your pain.
But don't despair. You shouldn't expect us to be perfect—it's not possible for us to be, and it would be really boring if we were. As Magic R&D Director Randy Buehler likes to say, “We're better off pushing cards than making another Homelands.” Part of the excitement of building decks with new cards should be the idea that R&D might have missed something, and you could be the one to rub our faces in it. We don't want people to have the false idea that we have every environment mapped out and solved and we're just watching from above, waiting to see if you all fall in line. It's not like that at all. We have a decent idea of what decks will be good, but we never get it exactly right. We didn't put Wonder in our madness decks, Astral Slide in our cycling decks, or Patriarch's Bidding in our Goblin decks. We never had a tier-1 Tooth and Nail deck or white Urzatron deck. We thought Wizards were a real deck, for crying out loud! And we obviously didn't put Skullclamp in our Affinity decks (until it was too late).
Quote from Aaron Forsythe »
The banning of eight cards in Standard (and, to a lesser extent, the restricting of Trinisphere in Vintage) has polarized the game's audience. There are those that simply love what we've done with the place, while others believe us to be insane, dumb, greedy, or some combination of the three. So what happened between December 1st and March 1st?
Was Standard that bad? Was the format actually not diverse enough, and not solvable enough? Looked at purely analytically, the format probably wasn't that bad. Decks emerged that could beat Affinity. You could play something other than Affinity or Tooth and Nail and have a decent chance to succeed. If the DCI attempted to solve every issue as if it were a complicated math problem, we very well might have done nothing again.
After all, banning cards is bad, and we only want to ban cards if a format was lopsided enough to warrant action, which Standard may not have been. The best deck only won X% of the time, was beaten by the second-best deck Y% of the time, and decks #3, 4, and 5 were all played in reasonable numbers. If we like the math, no problem. Just like last time.
But in the past three months R&D and the DCI have been reminded that Magic is not a series of balanced equations, spreadsheets of Top 8 results and data of card frequencies. Magic is a game played by human beings that want to have fun.
One of the most damning statements that can be made about a game is that it is not fun, and that's exactly what we've been hearing lately about Standard. Sure, ever since Affinity first showed up after the release of Mirrodin (and more so after it was revamped and supercharged with the release of Darksteel), people complained about it. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence in my inbox of people quitting Magic, threatening to quit, or stepping away from Standard for some amount of time because of the dark cloud of Affinity—and believe me, each of those emails made me unhappy—but recently the evidence of the general public's disdain for what the format looks like has gone from anecdotal to measurable. With some of the biggest Standard events of the year—Regionals, Nationals, and Worlds—on the horizon, how many more players could we continue to frustrate and alienate?
We know what to do if a format is horribly unbalanced, but what do we do when it is equally unfun? As much as I'd like to hire clowns to make balloon animals at every Friday Night Magic, we're stuck using more traditional means of damage control—the Banned and Restricted Lists.
At this point I hope it is becoming clearer why we did what we did, but I'll keep explaining anyway.
Going in to our meetings that would ultimately lead to this eight-card ban, we knew the goal was to make a statement. We had to alter the reality of the format, but we also had to let the world know without a doubt that we “slew the dragon” as it were. Affinity had to go away, and everyone that was having doubts about the future of Standard needed to understand it. With that thought, we came to an agreement to ban the five Mirrodin artifact lands.
Affinity had to go away, and everyone that was having doubts about the future of Standard needed to understand it.
Those five, we reasoned, would do the job thoroughly—Affinity couldn't exist without its skeleton, right? We knew such a ban would affect other decks, primarily Krark-Clan Ironworks, but that deck was guilty by association as far as we were concerned. If we somehow managed to remove Ravager Affinity from the environment—and just Ravager Affinity—I have little doubt that KCI would have stepped right in to the vacated “public enemy #1” slot, won lots and lots of games way earlier than it had any right to, and still forced players to maindeck multiple copies of Oxidize, March of the Machines, and the like. Sweeping change to the format? Not hardly. So KCI getting a little residual hate was not a sticking point for us.
The big issue was the one I brought up in December (and I quote): “We like to avoid having to solve problems by banning cards, as that leads to a culture of fear. We certainly don't want people to start believing that all the good cards they own are in the crosshairs of the DCI. With that in mind, can you imagine the weird backlash that would happen if we banned artifact lands? Most players that aren't into the tournament scene would have no idea at all why we did this. Tree of Tales is banned?! It's one of the most powerful cards ever?! Are you kidding me?! While it would certainly solve the problem on the top end, it would alienate and confuse people elsewhere.” Although it may seem hard to believe at the moment, all that stuff is still true. I feel for casual players everywhere who can no longer discard a land to Thirst for Knowledge, and I pity those that will have to explain this event to them—store owners, local TO's, and our poor customer service department. But it came down to risk versus reward, and we have to hope that our casual audience is more resilient than our tournament audience.
You can't please all of the people all of the time, although heaven knows we try.
While this information is specifically to the banning of cards in Standard since Urza's, the general approach is very applicable: how WotC looks at Standard environments and how they are developed. Bold is my emphasis in quite a few areas but it should be clear: competitive > casual AS RIGHTLY IT SHOULD.
That is the literal definition of the Timmy psychographic; it's been touched upon slightly in other BFZ threads but Timmy will play with whatever Dragon/Mermaid/Pokemon/Bigg Stinkin' Monster they like. It doesn't have to be good, it just has to fit into my Kobold/Dwarf/Orc/Thallid deck and I'll play it. Timmies play Stormbreath Dragon, Timmies aren't upset that the card is competitively pushed and used by Spikes; THAT'S the exact overlap on cards you want to have to be successful.
Now while Spike will play whatever mana/removal/finisher that is the best in the format, just like Timmy will play whatever Angel is the new Big Bad that came out, Spike STOPS GOING TO TOURNAMENTS WHEN THE FORMAT IS BAD. That's what WotC looks at, specifically Standard. Kitchen table magic is always fun, that's how it works, it can't not be by any measureable metric that WotC does. Nothing WotC does can affect how I play at my table, I can unban Skullclamp all I want. They can't force me to do it but they do force Standard players to do it; that's exactly how standard works. When WotC talks about the game not being fun or being boring, they aren't talking about casuals they are talking about Spikes. The competitive scene. The PT dream that they sell to get people to travel to GP's and the like. Magic has exploded casually over the last few years due to the same WoW phenomenon: accessibility to content. WotC says that as well, core sets didn't work in the past as an entry point, it was DoTP and the branding on social media. ACCESS. PRESENCE. Those free mini decks for the newbies to battle with. Event decks to start FNM.
Don't kid yourselves, WotC is pushing sales to the spikes. Original zen treasures, now expeditions, Fetchalnds in FRF packs, God packs in THS block, Shocks in DGM, wow, what's the common denominator? High rarity tournament staples? Casuals aren't going to chase the BFZ lottery, by definition the money they spend on it would not be enough to do it (since they are....casuals).
Deny it all you want, the relevancy of BFZ in Standard tournament play is definitely the metric to consider BFZ a winner/loser by. If you want to give WotC the benefit of the doubt that it will take a bit longer to impact, sure, that's fair but stop whiteknighting the situation: public sentiment is not positive on here, other website articles, FNMs and words from the Pros.
When tourney attendance drops, WotC pays attention. If it's not fun (by how WotC looks at fun up above), it's a fail.
re fading and vanishing: since Wotc says vanishing is a corrected/fixed Fading, I'm betting on the latter vs the former if at all since both are an 8 and 7 on the Storm Scale.
From Nemesis, the free spells counting land types would be interesting given the Triomes but that cycle is technically a color hoser cycle which they don't like.
Prophecy: nothing (no way they do Rhystic).
Invasion: Domain with Triomes? Could turn into 5 color good pile decks but this seems like a shoe-in. I am already going to try and play 5c Lucky Charms anyways.
Planeshift: Gating? Seems unlikely but see above on the disappearing/vanishing story.
Apocalypse: nothing here.
Odyssey: Flashback is too soon; the threshold clue above seems like a red herring so nothing here as well.
Torment: nothing here.
Judgment: Wishes can always just be a thing I guess.
Onslaught: Morph is a no go.
Legions: Everything here is updated/fixed/outdated.
Scourge: Do I need to even mention Storm? Again, the clues above about copies is a red herring imo.
Mirrodin: Entwine is unlikely.
Darksteel: Modular is a no.
Fifth Dawn: Sunburst with triomes could be a thing but unlikely.
Kamigawa block: nothing at all from here since we just had NEO.
Ravnica block: nothing from here, too flavor based except things like Convoke.
Coldsnap: nothing from here.
Time Spiral: Suspend/Split Second are no go.
Planar Chaos: Vanishing.
Future Sight: too many here, I always figured Granduer should have came back with NEO but alas.
Lorwyn: Hideaway is the only realistic one.
Morningtide: none of these fit; Reinforce works with modified creatures?
Shadowmoor/Eventide: Nada here. They don't like the Untap symbol.
Shards block: I think it's fair that they don't want to retread anything here.
Zendikar: Nothing here, landfall is basically evergreen at this point.
1000000% this. WotC got the exact wrong answer to the Modern problem. Just reprint the damn cards, it's FREE MONEY.
I would have liked a full vertical cycle, oh well.
T1 Entomb, LED, crack, this. Broken.
Love it.
Or T1 Thoughtseize for protection.
Ridiculous.
Modern events and metagame @ mtgtop8.com
https://www.mtgtop8.com/format?f=MO
You are correct that Humans isn't tier 0, I didn't realize Spirits topped that quick. To say it's not close however with that small margin of difference?
This card could push it up ala Dredge with chill. This doesn't really help a huge amount with the top decks but does so much splash damage incidental hate against the rest of the field that you'd get a lot of MD free rolls by playing Humans. This definitely would increase metashare in the future and just gives a great tool to a deck that didn't need it.
Scarier thought? Not much downside for Spirits to play this either MD. 😶
Tron
Burn (rift bolt)
Infect (mutagenic)
Mardu (turn 1 looting, turn 2 souls)
Ad Nauseum (bloom)
Living End
Jund (cascade)
U/x Turns (miracle)
UWx Control (delve, terminus)
Phoenix variants (gut shot)
Hollow One
This is dumb.
We better get the obvious Opt version but man... your version would be amazing, reminds me of Buried Alive being the great Threshold enabler.
Surveil certainly operates on the same spectrum as Explore but certainly has more potential to be much more powerful. I highly doubt we'll see a triple explore card due to clunkiness and being tied to creatures is limiting. It is definitely not a strictly worse version by any means
Winner winner, chicken dinner. Flashback should always be overcosted since it's an instant access recast. Retrace was turning your worst dead cards, lands, into repeatable effects i.e. needs to be overcosted.
I know WotC would want to err on the side of caution here but overcosting is mechanically incorrect; the danger, as always, is in aggressively costing or free.
Haven't posted in about two years...not surprised that Ravnica is what brought me back. Convoke as always is great, Boros is boring as usual (Radiance WAS overcosted as another poster stated but I liked it), Jump-start will be the juice, Surveil is simple, uninspired and powerful while Undergrwoth is another win for Golgari.
4/5 ain't bad at all I'd say.
I mean, a slightly better Douse in Gloom/Last Kiss is not anything to get excited about.
Sorin's Thirst is what I'd take in a standard environment vs aggro over this.
Q: I control a Leonin Arbiter; my opponent pays 2 for the Arbiter, then activates a Windswept Heath. Can I respond by flashing Restoration Angel and blinking the Arbiter, to make my opponent have to pay another 2 (or not get to search for a land)?
A: You can. When the Arbiter leaves and re-enters the battlefield, it becomes, from the game's perspective, an entirely new object with no memory of or relation to the Arbiter that was on the battlefield before. So although your opponent paid for the ability of that Arbiter, your opponent hasn't paid for the ability of the Arbiter that's on the battlefield now, and will need to pay another or not be able to search.
I don't question the blinking double tax but my understanding was that you could activate something like a fetch, then if it required a payment the game WOULD allow you to activate mana abilities in the middle of the ability resolving to pay for those things. I know there is some other card/ability that references this, it's similar but not quite like Ghostly Prison where you don't have to activate mana abilities prior to announcing attackers. Clarification would be nice.
So the question is can you activate mana abilities and pay the arbiter's tax 'during' the resolution of the ability?
P.S. Found another scenario where this would be relevant: Blood Speaker. Once the ability triggers, if you have to pay the 2 in advance, your opponent could then kill Speaker in response to the trigger after you paid the 2, REALLY hosing you. Obviously killing Speaker in response is a good play regardless but if they can get you to waste 2 mana as well, all the better of course.
While this information is specifically to the banning of cards in Standard since Urza's, the general approach is very applicable: how WotC looks at Standard environments and how they are developed. Bold is my emphasis in quite a few areas but it should be clear: competitive > casual AS RIGHTLY IT SHOULD.
That is the literal definition of the Timmy psychographic; it's been touched upon slightly in other BFZ threads but Timmy will play with whatever Dragon/Mermaid/Pokemon/Bigg Stinkin' Monster they like. It doesn't have to be good, it just has to fit into my Kobold/Dwarf/Orc/Thallid deck and I'll play it. Timmies play Stormbreath Dragon, Timmies aren't upset that the card is competitively pushed and used by Spikes; THAT'S the exact overlap on cards you want to have to be successful.
Now while Spike will play whatever mana/removal/finisher that is the best in the format, just like Timmy will play whatever Angel is the new Big Bad that came out, Spike STOPS GOING TO TOURNAMENTS WHEN THE FORMAT IS BAD. That's what WotC looks at, specifically Standard. Kitchen table magic is always fun, that's how it works, it can't not be by any measureable metric that WotC does. Nothing WotC does can affect how I play at my table, I can unban Skullclamp all I want. They can't force me to do it but they do force Standard players to do it; that's exactly how standard works. When WotC talks about the game not being fun or being boring, they aren't talking about casuals they are talking about Spikes. The competitive scene. The PT dream that they sell to get people to travel to GP's and the like. Magic has exploded casually over the last few years due to the same WoW phenomenon: accessibility to content. WotC says that as well, core sets didn't work in the past as an entry point, it was DoTP and the branding on social media. ACCESS. PRESENCE. Those free mini decks for the newbies to battle with. Event decks to start FNM.
Don't kid yourselves, WotC is pushing sales to the spikes. Original zen treasures, now expeditions, Fetchalnds in FRF packs, God packs in THS block, Shocks in DGM, wow, what's the common denominator? High rarity tournament staples? Casuals aren't going to chase the BFZ lottery, by definition the money they spend on it would not be enough to do it (since they are....casuals).
Deny it all you want, the relevancy of BFZ in Standard tournament play is definitely the metric to consider BFZ a winner/loser by. If you want to give WotC the benefit of the doubt that it will take a bit longer to impact, sure, that's fair but stop whiteknighting the situation: public sentiment is not positive on here, other website articles, FNMs and words from the Pros.
When tourney attendance drops, WotC pays attention. If it's not fun (by how WotC looks at fun up above), it's a fail.