I'm wondering the same thing about Coffers myself, since you can't always have Urborg. I would not run Lens outside of a monocolored deck period, given the inherent risk in exiling a land and the fact that it doesn't play nice with your non-basics.
I'm not sure where you got the misconception that six mana wraths are an old, rather than modern, trend when Wrath of God itself was printed it Alpha. The older wraths that cost 5+ had significant upside, like Catastrophe's ability to double as an Armageddon or Rout's optional flash. Honest to god wraths cost 5+ for the same reason mana dorks now cost 2+, MaRo decided that 4 and 1 were too good for standard.
It may be irrational, but this kind of comment pisses me off. MaRo didn't decide that, the design team did so. They didn't want to have to be careful with every green 3-drop because of Green's ability to power them out on turn 2. They didn't want to have 4-mana-wraths in Standard because it rendered bigger creatures near-obsolete unless they were titan levels of broken. But no, it's all MaRo's fault and wizards hates it's players, I get it.
You're right, the head designer probably has nothing to do with design decisions and WotC pays hims just to post on social media. :^)
I would be delighted to pull either of the two new card masterpieces. They were pretty clearly designed with EDH in mind and I can't wait to try and bust them.
Even if we don't get into whether or not Built to Smash is the second best red common, it certainly doesn't deserve to be taken P1P2. Combat tricks are completely ineffective if you don't have a strong enough board presence to be the aggressor, and taking a trick over a solid 2-3 mana beater reduces your ability to have that presence. Combat tricks, equipment, non-removal auras, and vehicles all rely on you having creatures on board, and as I mentioned I took 6 such cards, but would never actually run them all. For the AI behavior to be realistic and competitive it needs to realize that all Built to Smashes are not created equal, and that the card hates to play with other copies of itself and really anything that isn't a creature. Good 2 drops are kind of at a premium in this format and there was already a good green card in my pool; Built was not even on my radar as a card to think about taking there. I think there need to be separate ratings for the draft and deck building phases, because a combat trick can be a strong addition to your deck (4 cannot), but it's not something you should prioritize unless you somehow manage to make it to pack 3 without taking any, or if there are strong synergies, like Armorcraft Judge + Subtle Strike, that make one trick way better than any of the others for your particular deck. I'm confident that a large majority of experienced drafters would agree with my pick, and I'm confident most who don't would take Brazen Scourge, not Built to Smash. If you want to improve the simulator then adjusting it to focus more on curving out and disfavoring cards that are bad in multiples is a good place to start.
I've never not had a combat trick that I desperately needed in my pool, but I can't say the same about 2 drops, removal, and fixing.
The best way is to spend $ on MTGO, or go in on some physical sealed product to practice with other local players. CFB tends to have good limited related content, but other than the weekly Limited Resources casts I don't know how much will be out by the time of your GP.
If they really wanted a thopter themed card, why not Thopter Foundry? They could have even replaced another dud with Sword of the Meek and had both halves of the combo available as masterworks.
Newlamog also deserves a better trigger since, outside of limited, the attack trigger does nothing immediate unlike annihilator 4 which is a 4 for 1. Unmake is clean, simple instant exile with no catch. Final Judgment was close to obsoleted by Hallowed Burial and Terminus. While exile is nice, was it ever worth a +2 while other nice perks tend to cost 1? Also, back in the day, wraths tended to cost 6 because Wizards was worried about the 8 wrath deck that proved to be a dumb idea after Damnation and Wrath shared the same standard. While there's a lot more exile printed now, there's also lots more recursion than there was back in the beginning, too. We didn't have things like persist, undying, Reassembling Skeleton, etc. There were a few Regrowth effects, a few recurring dudes that were way worse at it, admittedly overpowered creature reanimation, and that was about it. There was no indestructible, hexproof/shroud, very few etb triggers, and certainly not creatures that were easily recurrable every turn or multiple times per turn indefinately. You can't just ignore the rest of the card as well as history if you're trying to actually be fair and balanced.
A better trigger? What more could you possibly want than two free Scour from Existence stapled onto your 10/10 colorless beatstick? Replicating the trigger with spells would cost more mana than Ulamog.
I'm not sure where you got the misconception that six mana wraths are an old, rather than modern, trend when Wrath of God itself was printed it Alpha. The older wraths that cost 5+ had significant upside, like Catastrophe's ability to double as an Armageddon or Rout's optional flash. Honest to god wraths cost 5+ for the same reason mana dorks now cost 2+, MaRo decided that 4 and 1 were too good for standard.
Well considering the amount of topics about "blue lacking a clear idea what blue is about now that we won't get counterspell and draw-go interactions" in the standard forum: yes blue has an identity crisis. It's near impossible to make a blue-main control or a blue-main mill deck nowadays.
As someone who gets blown out by u/r Dynavolt every week I can confirm that draw go is as powerful and obnoxious as ever.
Why would anyone favor tuck, when exile is the much cleaner option? Cleaner as in one word compared to "put card on the bottom of library", cleaner as in it's like a fire-and-forget missile (you know the card's not coming back until the next game). Magic is game of numerous decisions, many of these decisions take too much time. One has to think on a Wizards design/developer perspective why they do the things they do. There's so many benefits why exile is used more than tuck.
As for creep, let's not forget that we've "creature creep" probably during Lorwyn onwards, except that it's not. The same with Blue losing more and more stuff on their color pie, the same with red expanding on what they can do. It's not creep. In MaRo's words, it's self-correcting.
In the eyes of a novice player, yea it does look like it's creeping. But to me creeping is when things go overboard; more than they should.
I didn't say that tuck was better, I said that I wanted WotC to start printing more of it as opposed to exile. Exile removal should be the exception, not the rule, and getting that level of finality should come at a premium. I suggested tuck as an alternative to exile because it also gets around indestructibility.
Also, how on Earth can you think blue's slice of the pie is shrinking, when using the whole pie has become one of its a feature? It snagged hexproof when they keyworded the mechanic and stopped printing shroud, it's stolen exile shenanigans and permanent removal from white, and uncounterable spells from red and green.
Do you guys think a leadership change could turn things around? Obviously the new head would have to make some substantive changes to the site after taking over, but would Freytag stepping down restore public confidence or is the death spiral irreversible at this point?
I don't think that it is so much an issue of leadership, it's an issue of their vision. They had a good plan, it's just that their execution went downhill when they tried to make too many improvements all at once and were too aggressive at removing points from the system. Eric and the others have shown that they are serious about the site and have put time, effort, and money into it. So it isn't that they need to be removed, it's that they need to actually listen to the users complaints.
I think the current state of the site demonstrates that they did not have a good plan, even if they did have good intentions. My biggest concern during the good times was that the site was financially unsustainable, and as behind the scenes info like paying writers and even full time tech positions in pucapoints surfaced it's become increasingly obvious that's the case. They spent tens of thousands of dollars of other peoples' money on the Future Site overhaul, but didn't address issues like inflation and bounties until the site was dying and didn't really fix either. Not to mention driving off most of the power senders by banning pucapoint sales. I for one think the current leadership is too set on their idea of what they want the site to be to realize that it isn't working out and taking a radically different approach is the only way to turn things around. I've been hoping to get proven wrong for about a year now.
I think it's more of Magic keeping up to date than creep. Like any updates to a digital game, buffing a character's stat has consequences. Wizards has removed regeneration and replaced with indestructible. Naturally like any balanced game with leveled mechanics, there has to be a yin and yang. The answer for indestructible? Exile.
Again, moving forward to EDH, many players are slow to update and keep up with the ever-changing landscape of magic. Magic will die if it stagnates, and this shift represents change. It's up to EDH players to own up and alter their decks accordingly.
If anything, the "new" change is a positive one IMO. It's about time we see less recursive things. A game shouldn't be about centered around repetition of a few choice cards.
RoE Ulamog destroys one permanent on cast, Newlamog exiles two. Unmake exiled one creature for wb wb wb and Reality Shift does it for 1U in a color that shouldn't have spot removal in the first place. Descend Upon the Sinful is strictly better Final Judgment. Exile removal is absolutely on an upward creep, and with the exception of Orbs of Warding, which stops most of the popular graveyard nukes, no new tools have been printed to fight it. I can't remember the last time we got a good tuck effect, which also gets around indestructibility, WotC should really go that direction if they want to fight blightsteel and the gods.
I would really like to get the Riftsweeper trigger as an activated ability on a cheap utility card. Something along the lines of Scavenging Ooze or Bow of Nylea.
Do you guys think a leadership change could turn things around? Obviously the new head would have to make some substantive changes to the site after taking over, but would Freytag stepping down restore public confidence or is the death spiral irreversible at this point?
@arfmagic
I mulligan more than I consider acceptable with 20 lands, so 19 including a basic Island is too few. I've thought about trying out Voyager myself, but he seems awful without Longtusk Cub. Pulse and Radiant both seem pretty awful. Which match ups did you include them for?
I had a brief fling with Custodi Lich, but ended up cutting him because it was hard to get the draw + edict every turn, which is what I really wanted out of it. I've seen Regal Behemoth played and it looked pretty good; it's on my list of cards to try out. Throne is also on its way into my Freyalise deck as a sac land for Titania, where I expect it to be a solid role player.
I think Throne will be the most common in the 99. It's colorless, and it functions as a regular land in your opening hand.
You're right, the head designer probably has nothing to do with design decisions and WotC pays hims just to post on social media. :^)
I've never not had a combat trick that I desperately needed in my pool, but I can't say the same about 2 drops, removal, and fixing.
A better trigger? What more could you possibly want than two free Scour from Existence stapled onto your 10/10 colorless beatstick? Replicating the trigger with spells would cost more mana than Ulamog.
I'm not sure where you got the misconception that six mana wraths are an old, rather than modern, trend when Wrath of God itself was printed it Alpha. The older wraths that cost 5+ had significant upside, like Catastrophe's ability to double as an Armageddon or Rout's optional flash. Honest to god wraths cost 5+ for the same reason mana dorks now cost 2+, MaRo decided that 4 and 1 were too good for standard.
As someone who gets blown out by u/r Dynavolt every week I can confirm that draw go is as powerful and obnoxious as ever.
I didn't say that tuck was better, I said that I wanted WotC to start printing more of it as opposed to exile. Exile removal should be the exception, not the rule, and getting that level of finality should come at a premium. I suggested tuck as an alternative to exile because it also gets around indestructibility.
Also, how on Earth can you think blue's slice of the pie is shrinking, when using the whole pie has become one of its a feature? It snagged hexproof when they keyworded the mechanic and stopped printing shroud, it's stolen exile shenanigans and permanent removal from white, and uncounterable spells from red and green.
I think the current state of the site demonstrates that they did not have a good plan, even if they did have good intentions. My biggest concern during the good times was that the site was financially unsustainable, and as behind the scenes info like paying writers and even full time tech positions in pucapoints surfaced it's become increasingly obvious that's the case. They spent tens of thousands of dollars of other peoples' money on the Future Site overhaul, but didn't address issues like inflation and bounties until the site was dying and didn't really fix either. Not to mention driving off most of the power senders by banning pucapoint sales. I for one think the current leadership is too set on their idea of what they want the site to be to realize that it isn't working out and taking a radically different approach is the only way to turn things around. I've been hoping to get proven wrong for about a year now.
RoE Ulamog destroys one permanent on cast, Newlamog exiles two. Unmake exiled one creature for wb wb wb and Reality Shift does it for 1U in a color that shouldn't have spot removal in the first place. Descend Upon the Sinful is strictly better Final Judgment. Exile removal is absolutely on an upward creep, and with the exception of Orbs of Warding, which stops most of the popular graveyard nukes, no new tools have been printed to fight it. I can't remember the last time we got a good tuck effect, which also gets around indestructibility, WotC should really go that direction if they want to fight blightsteel and the gods.
I would really like to get the Riftsweeper trigger as an activated ability on a cheap utility card. Something along the lines of Scavenging Ooze or Bow of Nylea.
I mulligan more than I consider acceptable with 20 lands, so 19 including a basic Island is too few. I've thought about trying out Voyager myself, but he seems awful without Longtusk Cub. Pulse and Radiant both seem pretty awful. Which match ups did you include them for?
I think Throne will be the most common in the 99. It's colorless, and it functions as a regular land in your opening hand.