G/B is already very dominant in modern, and standard (Abzan). There is no need to make a pushed G/B manland. This is nothing special like Shambling Vent but still fine.
This set's value is just terrible. Every non-mythic at under 5$, has there ever been a big set where that was the case at pre-order time, when the vast majority of cards are overpriced? Not only that, but all non-planeswalker mythics at under 7$, and several of those aren't guaranteed that they'll even see play.
Probably skipping the pre-release for this one, if you don't pull a PW, you could easy win 10+ packs and still not break even, when you consider that a lot of those 2-4$ rares will fall to bulk soon enough.
Segmented Krotiq is strictly better than Dirgur Nemesis ignoring color and is rated 0.5 lower? Even if random big guys aren't as good in green as in blue, that doesn't make much sense.
Pinion feast can't be that high, it requires a target, can't just play it for the bolster.
Underrated cards imo:
Conifer Strider: 1.2 seems way too low. Bolster is a thing, and this is nuts with something like Taigam's Strike. Even ignoring that, it can still trade with lots of 4-6 drops on defense. No way is something like +0/+5 and reach a better card.
Kolaghan Stormsinger: can a morph be that close to unplayable? This isn't great but can give a fatty haste in the late game.
Champion of Arashin. Why would you need spidersilk net when there is bolster, not to mention its relevant creature type.
Dromoka Warrior: Aggressive 2-drop with the most relevant creature type. Can't be that much worse than Herald of Dromoka.
Wizards prints the stupidest rares nowadays, seriously is 'multicolored' so complex now that something that mentions it needs to be rare? There's nothing rare-feeling about the card, the name is generic.
And it's not because of limited, because this card will be just about unplayable there, since Khans is not drafted with Dtk.
I feel like also mentioning that I hate this sort of aura (really, any good evasion aura). High risk, high reward cards don't make things fun for me. It's why I can't stand Hearthstone (and the lack of interaction on my opponent's turn). So many games involving this come down to "ooops, I had no removal or bounce, you free won" or "haha I 2 for 1ed you and gained a serious tempo edge on you <roll to an easy win". It doesn't feel good to me to win with it, nor does it feel good to lose to it. It's no Angelic Destiny or equipped Invisible Stalker, at least, but still.
Agreed, I hate games that come down to 'do you have it?' similar to how combo decks in eternal formats force their opponents to have the counterspell/disruption or decks like infect where the entire game is just 'am i dead?'. That's not skill at all, it's just luck.
In limited, you can't just pack your deck with all the answers you think you'll need like in constructed. Sometimes you don't have a removal spell, no one mulligans every hand that doesn't have one.
Another issue is that Wizards has decided that common removal has to be heavily overcosted now, so you're still in a bad spot even if you have a removal spell sometimes. If you're on the draw, and you have a removal spell but it's Throttle/Reach of Shadows, and your opponent has a t3 runemark on even a vanilla bear, you will take 12 damage, not to mention the possibility of them having a Feat of resistance or some other effect to save their guy by that point. 12 damage is a ton, pretty easily worth getting 2-for-1ed especially when one of the cards you lose was going to have little value anyway.
I would be very interested in finding out who takes Abzan Beastmaster over Valorous Stance. Stance does exactly what you want it to do 100% of the time and is always worth the splash. Can everyone say the same for Beastmaster? I would vote to put Stance in his position.
What does Valorous Stance do when you are getting beat down by a couple of Mystic of the Hidden Way/Jeskai Windscouts that you can't race?
Also, for this topic in general some people have Elite Scaleguard as the best non-rare as opposed to the Sabertooth.
I hate their stupid new philosophy that all or almost all common removal must be overcosted to hell. They say common removal can't be better than Dark Banishing, but there hasn't even been anything close to Dark Banishing in Khans at common, it's all way worse. This just also increases the disparity between the rarities that already exists among creatures. Now not only are rare creatures vastly superior, but so is the rare removal whereas before common had cards like Terminate and Doom Blade. This just increases the variance and the luck factor.
At the FRF pre-release, one game I mulliganed to five and got stuck on lands and my opponent had a turn 1 Warden of the First Tree, and just kept pumping their mana into it. I had a Reach of Shadows in hand but bricked on the 5th land all game and so just died to it. If I drew the 5th land on time, or if it instead was a reasonable removal spell like Murder, I very likely would have won because my opponent had very little action aside the Warden and was playing lots of weak cards that I could have overcome as my hand had lots of action being mana-screwed and all.
I agree that once both players are past a certain threshold of knowing what they're doing such as how to evaluate cards correctly, limited is just largely luck, especially Sealed. Yes, if you face some new player at a pre-release who is playing lots of bad cards, you will very likely win even if luck isn't on your side ie. you get flooded each game, but if you and your opponent are adequate players, it will very often come down to who draws the more ideal curve/amount of lands, or if someone has a stupid bomb like Citadel Siege.
Pod was fine for more than 3 years and all of a sudden, it's not? Maybe Wizards should stop printing stupidly overpowered cards like Siege Rhino, instead of screwing over countless players of their time and money.
At this point, it just seems like 4c/5c goodstuff is the best deck. You can get high-quality 3-color cards very late. I've not done many drafts but I've seen many strong 2 and 3-color cards go very late like 11-13th pick, stuff like Sultai Soothsayer, Warden of the Eye, the 3-color common morphs.
You are a massive advantage any time you face a 2c/3c deck and they don't curve out due to your superior card quality. And this happens a lot because there is a lack of good 2-drops in the set.
Not to mention you basically start at 23-26 life thanks to your lands, and there are a ton of decent defensive creatures at common like Parapet, the 0/5 looter, Disowned Ancestor, Sagu Archer etc.
no matter how many times I see this though it all comes back down to the first thing I said. While it isn't a big difference, there's no denying that it is a difference. There are enough other reasons in the format to use it too. With Scry, Courser and delve there are enough different ways you can utilize varying your topdeck. Even if you weren't doing any of those though. Let's consider the 1.74% difference in card selection. Let's consider that that translated to a 1.74% win percentage change because in that 1 game in 60, you got the card you needed rather than another land. That means that it helps you win a game once every 20 rounds. In FNM that's not important, but in a PTQ, Pro-Tour or major open, that's enough to make the difference between sitting at the top tables or not. So, not it's not a big difference but it's still a difference and if you do enough things that get you an extra 1%-2%, they add up.
That makes no sense, running fetches 100% for "thinning" is wrong because the life loss is more likely to lose you the game then the extremely insignificant thinning is to win you the game. The number of rounds is irrelevant.
Drawing 1.74% more spells over a PTQ does not translate to 1.74% higher win percentage. You don't choose what spell you drew. How likely is it that an aggro player drawing some random 1-drop instead of a land on turn 10 will be the difference between winning and losing? Very Slim.
You are much more likely to lose the game because you gave your opponent 2-3 damage for free, in aggro mirror matches mainly. As a mainly aggro player, I've had many, many games where I was 1-2 damage short of winning as well as games where I was able to not block my opponent's attack and go to 1-3 life and then deal lethal on the backswing which would not have been possible if I had 2 less life.
Probably skipping the pre-release for this one, if you don't pull a PW, you could easy win 10+ packs and still not break even, when you consider that a lot of those 2-4$ rares will fall to bulk soon enough.
Pinion feast can't be that high, it requires a target, can't just play it for the bolster.
Underrated cards imo:
Conifer Strider: 1.2 seems way too low. Bolster is a thing, and this is nuts with something like Taigam's Strike. Even ignoring that, it can still trade with lots of 4-6 drops on defense. No way is something like +0/+5 and reach a better card.
Kolaghan Stormsinger: can a morph be that close to unplayable? This isn't great but can give a fatty haste in the late game.
Champion of Arashin. Why would you need spidersilk net when there is bolster, not to mention its relevant creature type.
Dromoka Warrior: Aggressive 2-drop with the most relevant creature type. Can't be that much worse than Herald of Dromoka.
And it's not because of limited, because this card will be just about unplayable there, since Khans is not drafted with Dtk.
Agreed, I hate games that come down to 'do you have it?' similar to how combo decks in eternal formats force their opponents to have the counterspell/disruption or decks like infect where the entire game is just 'am i dead?'. That's not skill at all, it's just luck.
In limited, you can't just pack your deck with all the answers you think you'll need like in constructed. Sometimes you don't have a removal spell, no one mulligans every hand that doesn't have one.
Another issue is that Wizards has decided that common removal has to be heavily overcosted now, so you're still in a bad spot even if you have a removal spell sometimes. If you're on the draw, and you have a removal spell but it's Throttle/Reach of Shadows, and your opponent has a t3 runemark on even a vanilla bear, you will take 12 damage, not to mention the possibility of them having a Feat of resistance or some other effect to save their guy by that point. 12 damage is a ton, pretty easily worth getting 2-for-1ed especially when one of the cards you lose was going to have little value anyway.
What does Valorous Stance do when you are getting beat down by a couple of Mystic of the Hidden Way/Jeskai Windscouts that you can't race?
Also, for this topic in general some people have Elite Scaleguard as the best non-rare as opposed to the Sabertooth.
At the FRF pre-release, one game I mulliganed to five and got stuck on lands and my opponent had a turn 1 Warden of the First Tree, and just kept pumping their mana into it. I had a Reach of Shadows in hand but bricked on the 5th land all game and so just died to it. If I drew the 5th land on time, or if it instead was a reasonable removal spell like Murder, I very likely would have won because my opponent had very little action aside the Warden and was playing lots of weak cards that I could have overcome as my hand had lots of action being mana-screwed and all.
I agree that once both players are past a certain threshold of knowing what they're doing such as how to evaluate cards correctly, limited is just largely luck, especially Sealed. Yes, if you face some new player at a pre-release who is playing lots of bad cards, you will very likely win even if luck isn't on your side ie. you get flooded each game, but if you and your opponent are adequate players, it will very often come down to who draws the more ideal curve/amount of lands, or if someone has a stupid bomb like Citadel Siege.
You are a massive advantage any time you face a 2c/3c deck and they don't curve out due to your superior card quality. And this happens a lot because there is a lack of good 2-drops in the set.
Not to mention you basically start at 23-26 life thanks to your lands, and there are a ton of decent defensive creatures at common like Parapet, the 0/5 looter, Disowned Ancestor, Sagu Archer etc.
That makes no sense, running fetches 100% for "thinning" is wrong because the life loss is more likely to lose you the game then the extremely insignificant thinning is to win you the game. The number of rounds is irrelevant.
Drawing 1.74% more spells over a PTQ does not translate to 1.74% higher win percentage. You don't choose what spell you drew. How likely is it that an aggro player drawing some random 1-drop instead of a land on turn 10 will be the difference between winning and losing? Very Slim.
You are much more likely to lose the game because you gave your opponent 2-3 damage for free, in aggro mirror matches mainly. As a mainly aggro player, I've had many, many games where I was 1-2 damage short of winning as well as games where I was able to not block my opponent's attack and go to 1-3 life and then deal lethal on the backswing which would not have been possible if I had 2 less life.