04/30/2017
In: Combustible Gearhulk, Quicksmith Genius, Aetherworks Marvel
Out: Forcefield, Blood Moon, Blinkmoth Urn
Reason: Formalizing the changes I made a bit ago, so these aren't really 'new'. The 3 cards I formally added where what I enjoyed significantly from Kaladesh. The cuts were because more often one card was irrelevant (Forcefield), one was too 'hatey' in my new store (Blood Moon), and one provided ramp that was a little late/unnecessary (Blinkmoth Urn). The additions are spelled out inside the thread and card discussions, so see those sections for the major details
How's Marvel been working for you? I had real high hopes for it, but I never seemed to get any value off of it.
It's fun in casual games and not as dependable as I would like, but I've enjoyed the results enough to keep it in the list. It gets counters relatively easily based on how Daretti will sacrifice things as well as Goblin Welder, Trading Post, and Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer over the course of a game. Of the cards listed, it really makes Trading Post even more advantageous and definitely something I try to get into play more often.
04/30/2017
In: Combustible Gearhulk, Quicksmith Genius, Aetherworks Marvel
Out: Forcefield, Blood Moon, Blinkmoth Urn
Reason: Formalizing the changes I made a bit ago, so these aren't really 'new'. The 3 cards I formally added where what I enjoyed significantly from Kaladesh. The cuts were because more often one card was irrelevant (Forcefield), one was too 'hatey' in my new store (Blood Moon), and one provided ramp that was a little late/unnecessary (Blinkmoth Urn). The additions are spelled out inside the thread and card discussions, so see those sections for the major details
All I can say is my Selvala deck now has an awesome target to fetch with Birthing Pod when I sac a 6 CMC creature - I was tired of only grabbing Avenger of Zendikar. Value-town will be insane on the next activation lol...
I was just wondering if you forsee any changes having moved metas. I personally love infinite mana combos but I know your old LGS frowned upon it. Has your stance changed?
Not really, the meta move has forced me to be more casual still since it's more kitchen table builds and less competitive. Prizes are awarded by record and then you 'give a pack' to someone who you feel played cool/fair.
The move is also why there have been less updates lately - I am making a lot of little changes here and there to have fun. I should have something more formal coming up, but it's a huge pain to update the Primer for every little change.
I sometimes have a difficult time doing updates as well. Although, it's fairly easy when you're only updating a couple cards every now and then.
What are your thoughts on Oracle's Vault? I think it could be really good, especially for those running Paradox Engine.
I think it's a niche card that can be added to anyone's list if they want to got that way. It's also decent for any proliferate type deck too, so I'm excited to see it for that reason.
Since I am quoted in the original post, I really don't need to expand too heavily on my opinion other than I use it in my artifact decks to make up for the inherent weakness of artifacts.
However, there is definitely merit in that Painter's Servant is banned for 2-card interactions and Lattice is not. PS has more 2-card interactions than Lattice, but I am a huge fan of more consistent rulings and this is definitely a glaring example of the lack of consistency.
I was just wondering if you forsee any changes having moved metas. I personally love infinite mana combos but I know your old LGS frowned upon it. Has your stance changed?
Not really, the meta move has forced me to be more casual still since it's more kitchen table builds and less competitive. Prizes are awarded by record and then you 'give a pack' to someone who you feel played cool/fair.
The move is also why there have been less updates lately - I am making a lot of little changes here and there to have fun. I should have something more formal coming up, but it's a huge pain to update the Primer for every little change.
My two obscure ones I've done are Derevi Bird Tribal and Astral Slide (cycle theme) Zur. I ripped the Zur deck off from SCG's 'Commander VS' and it is a BLAST to play.
I haven't seen one in my group for several months. It's a powerfull card but doesn't seem that you could jam in every blue deck IMO. It needs another creature to abuse and you can bait it or respond atleast.
Same situation for me. Outside Roon decks, I also rarely run into this card anymore - it's good, but requires a really specific type of deck to be abusable imo.
First off, PoK is a joke compared to Paradox Engine in the competitive sense. PoK powered exactly one deck: Momir Vig, while Paradox Engine has almost singlehandedly shaken the entire competitive metagame, created two completely new decks that can't function properly without it (Paradox Arcum and Paradox Sisay) and is a crazy strong include in many other top tier decks. Also, please don't compare Paradox Engine to Reveillark. I have been playing a Reveillark deck for more than 7 years and the actual card is almost never as strong as Paradox Engine is in routine situations. Furthermore, where PE synergizes with any non-land mana producer, Reveillark really only combos with a handful of specific creatures and is merely a one-off value play otherwise. If anything, Paradox Engine should be compared to cards like Sneak Attack, since they are both pseudo Ritual factories. The main difference being that Paradox Engine works on all spells, not just creatures.
Think of it this way. If you are ONLY playing the most basic mana rocks (no Sol Ring, no Mana Vault, no Gilded Lotus, not even mana producing creatures, and definitely no other strong tap abilities), Paradox Engine basically says: Spells you cast have affinity for artifacts. Do you realize how broken that it?
I think you need to remember that competitive play has no influence on cards being put up for the ban list. Taking it out of that scenario and focusing on casual decks, really the synergistic effect of the card is strong, don't get me wrong, but not broken inherently by itself. Can people do more? Sure. But will PE normally always break a game, certainly not.
Honest question to everyone: how many times did you run into a player who had a banned card in their deck or told someone a BaaC card in a deck was banned and had to be explained about the BaaC list? I know I have encountered this a handful of times in my few playgroups, and I would imagine that most people who play at an LGS have at least once. So there were and will continue to be a portion of players who don't full grasp the rules and ban list before they start playing (you can further see this by the number of times a new player will start a thread to ask a basic question like general damage, command tax, etc). And sure, explaining the rules just once should be sufficient to these players, but what Papa Funk is saying (unless I'm mistaken) is that by eliminating these rules like tuck, BaaC, or off-color mana production, you make the format more grokable, which makes the format better from a design standpoint.
Like others, the only time I've run into this is when someone misses a ban update and usually fixes the issue right away once they are told. When explaining/teaching the format, I always reference the ban list and explain why it exists and I've never had someone question it much. I don't feel like Tuck, off-color mana production, or BaaC were too difficult to understand, even when explaining to 12 year olds who got it, so I question why it was believed they needed to be removed to make things more simple when it wasn't hard to understand to begin with...
04/30/2017
In: Combustible Gearhulk, Quicksmith Genius, Aetherworks Marvel
Out: Forcefield, Blood Moon, Blinkmoth Urn
Reason: Formalizing the changes I made a bit ago, so these aren't really 'new'. The 3 cards I formally added where what I enjoyed significantly from Kaladesh. The cuts were because more often one card was irrelevant (Forcefield), one was too 'hatey' in my new store (Blood Moon), and one provided ramp that was a little late/unnecessary (Blinkmoth Urn). The additions are spelled out inside the thread and card discussions, so see those sections for the major details
However, there is definitely merit in that Painter's Servant is banned for 2-card interactions and Lattice is not. PS has more 2-card interactions than Lattice, but I am a huge fan of more consistent rulings and this is definitely a glaring example of the lack of consistency.
The move is also why there have been less updates lately - I am making a lot of little changes here and there to have fun. I should have something more formal coming up, but it's a huge pain to update the Primer for every little change.