yes, While Sphinx have gotten a lot more attention lately from Theros and even a pretty Steady stream of cards before that, I am still sad that I have yet to find a card that cares about the creature type Sphinx. We have had cards that care about Angels, hell entire sets dedicated to Angels. We've had Shards dedicated to Dragons. We've had sets with Demons matter sub-themes. Yet I can't get a single card to care about Sphinx.
well I wouldn't call it copying Ravnica. Don't forget that Shards of Alara had 5 color based factions each with a legend, mechanic and so forth. It's just what they do.
My favorite color Blue, though I do share a great love of White and Black. Which makes sense since I am a faithful follower of the Religion of Card Advantage.
So it makes sense that the colors I can't play as are Red and Green. Mostly Green though. I just can't play ramp spells. It feels weird and wrong every time I do it. Why waste a turn and cards to play lands? I can do that for free every turn. They're awful in the late game too. Mana dorks are even worse. They're temporary lands that are very easily destroyed.
Then again I play a lot of multiplayer, which is a weird strange little format.
I think the problem with updating Planeswalker artwork is that people would immediately see it as a sign of a version of the 'walker. That's why the only alternate artworks have been in decks or promos and not in card sets.
Imagine if we found out that Sarkhan was still Sarkhan the Mad and he was just getting a new artwork next set? Yeah, people would be pretty pissed.
That position certainly makes sense, and I don't blame you for wanting your cards to hold value.
However, I look at the problem for a difference perspective. When I buy a card, I mostly don't expect to get my money back. I know that I could, and yes, I do consider the value of my cards, but by monthly budget for magic cards comes out of a sunk cost budget, not my investment budget.
How about this argument: How can you invest money into cards if you know that the price could drop in just 6 months? If Wizards of the Coast prints expensive cards all willy-nilly then it could lead to people not buying cards now and instead just waiting for future printing. That leads to people not buying cards, which is bad.
Instead we have a system that rewards people for buying cards. It's a good idea to buy cards like the Fetch and Shock Lands when they are printed as the price is low supply is up and once the set begins to cycle out in a few years the price is surely going to go up.
it's a tough situtation for Wizards as there aren't a lot of easy answers.
People for years have been complaining about the prices for Shocklands and wanting Wizards to reprint them. For YEARS I couldn't stop hearing people ask for Shocklands reprints. So Wizards finally got around to reprinting them in RtR. A year later all that did was change that tune to complaining about Fetchlands. I am positive that if Wizards reprinted Fetchands tomorrow, Mtg fans would find some new thing to complain about.
A lot of these comments saying that they only see play because it's all we got in Standard next to Shocks and Gates are wrong.
I think it's telling that you will find Standard control players run the Scry lands OVER shocklands.
You can see in the most recent GP control players using 12 Scry lands and only 5-6 Shocklands. They are using a full playset of Scrylands before they fill up on Shocklands! This isn't the sign of 'We don't have many options after Shocklands, It's that or guild gates.' this is the sign of 'Can be more useful than Shocklands.'
obviously this only applies in Standard as the syngery betwen Fetch/Shock/Check is just much more powerful, and the formats are a lot faster where coming into play tapped can be a more serious drawback.
They may not be god tier modern masters, but they aren't the garbage that everyone complains about either.
I love cycles. My favorite part of Ravnica was looking at all the different mega cycles scattered throughout the set, in fact I was disappointed that Return to Ravnica block had less cycles... though with less cards per set I can understand the reasons why.
I also loved the Shadowmoore/Eventide series partially due to just how many cycles those sets had.
Ok, on the first level, I do think it's important that everyone stops trying to put Theros Block in their own box when Wizards clearly has their own vision for it. The vision seems to be pretty clear; Find a way to make Enchantment Creatures Work. A big portion of Theros design seems to be placed with that in mind.
So while this is an Enchantment Block, as a much larger quantity of cards are Enchantments, it's not the typical Enchantment Block.
I also respect Wizards decision to try to make Enchantments matter in a way that was different from Artifacts. Those asking for "Affinity for Enchantments" are just being silly.
I don't feel that there is a flaw with Wizards vision, but I do think it might have to do with it's presentation, specifically the preview. Calling it an "Enchantment Block" has certainly led to some big misunderstandings and a lot of hurt players. I can see why they would not want to advertise it as an Enchantment Creature Block because that would ruin some of the surprise, but it has created an empty promise in some people's minds.
I think if this is going to be a lesson for Wizards it's going to be a lesson in the way they advertise their blocks, because clearly there has been some misunderstandings here.
Fair enough have filler, whatever. You can't have 150 good cards in every set but it seems to me like they are intentionally printing bad mythic rares which increases the value of the good ones.
First they show you all the crap cards you'll get if you do the right thing and purchase some sealed product then they expect you to go and take your chances.
I know most of the time I feel cheated when I buy loose boosters. Perhaps I'm not that lucky but whenever I crack a mythic and it's worth less than the price of the pack I feel a bit cheated. The chances of cracking a mythic are so low that you deserve to get an instant reward with a $10-$20 card.
Perhaps this is an unpopular opinon. Perhaps there are other threads about this sort of thing. Go easy on me, I just needed to rant and let it all out.
Wizard can never catch a break can they. They print awesome Mythics, people rage at them making those cards at the higher rarity. You print a non-constructed Mythic, people rage at them for taking up a mythic slot. Either way someone was going to be unhappy.
Just remember that this was one mythic slot. You have 5 awesome Mythic Gods for you.
We have just gone from a multicolor block where we invested in multicolor cards requiring an intensive manabase to a block that not only hoses these strategies, but actively lacks the support for cards we have already invested in.
This not only hits players monetarily, but also takes away from their fun by lessening their ability to play with cards from one of the most well-received blocks in recent history.
You can play with all of those great Multicolor cards. These lands will be played heavily in two color decks.
I think people are heavily underestimating this concept, but just for those of you who aren't getting it; 4 cipt lands is NOTHING!! With that few lands entering tapped, it's ridiculous how easy it is to plan your land drops accordingly. Not that it isn't a drawback, but if all your running is 4 of these and 4 shock lands, then your mana base is not only stronger but it's also very little difference.
What this does hurt is if your running much more than 4 cipt lands. Any deck managing something closer to 8-12 is going to have trouble; basically tricolor decks have been hurt. This means less getting greedy and playing just generic Good Stuff decks.
Who care about cipt other than aggro? Aggro cares Least about that because aggro wouldn't be stupid enough to PLAY these piles of dung. CONTROL gets screwed by a card that cipt. You can't miss a land drop in control because you have to be able to play your answers. Cipt is like being one turn behind the aggro deck that's putting on pressure.
And guess who needs dual lands the most? Control. Ever see a mono control deck much? Uh, uh, didn't think so.
Magic is getting so dumbed down for the masses that it makes me sick.
I think you have it reversed.
Aggro won't be stupid enough to play these... so that limits the amount of duals for aggro and hurts them a bit (less 3 color zoo good stuff decks)
Control likes these because while it comes into play tapped (which we've seen them willing to endure with the Manlands, so that really isn't a deal breaker) it also helps reach your next land drop. I think a two color control deck can work to run 4 cipt lands. They can plan accordingly.
Overall, these lands do their assigned job perfectly.
I am very disappointed with these lands, for numerous reasons. First, they are rares, when they are not nearly as powerful and the "shocklands" from Ravnica or the "taplands" from Magic 2010, which deserve their rare status, while comparable lands, such the refuges from Zendikar or the "tri-lands" from Alara, are only uncommons. From what I have observed, dual lands that can enter the battlefield untapped are always rares, while dual lands that are uncommons or commons must enter the battlefield tapped. Second, there are only five of these lands, some of which are in enemy colors and some of which are in allied colors, and WotC has stated that, from now on, when they print cycles of dual lands, they shall be certain to represent all ten two-color combinations, and not favor any specific combination or combinations over the others. Therefore, I do hope that WotC prints five more lands in this cycle, ether in this set, or in the next two sets of this block.
Overall, I definitely believe that WotC wasted five rare spaces in the card list of this set with these, a problem that could have been solved fairly easily by either making these lands uncommons or giving them the potential to enter the battlefield untapped, so I shall not make any extraordinary effort to obtain them, or keep them if I do obtain them at the prerelease events.
please, please, read the article previewing them before coming here. So many people making statements or asking questions that could be easily answered if you just read the article.
"Since we knew we would have all ten in the block, we went ahead right away and commissioned all ten pieces of art, which let us hold off on the decision on which duals to include in Theros until we'd had time to playtest Standard. We tried all the allieds, all of the enemies, and a few random mashups. Tom LaPille made a strong argument, though, that the previous year in Standard had extra time with the Return to Ravnica shocklands, and that the Gatecrash color pairs could use some extra time in the spotlight, so that is the model we went with. This left us with five more for the rest of the block. What will the order be for their release? You'll have to wait and see."
We've already explained that Savage Lands and Guildgates had to be placed in those rarities because of Limited. Multicolor puts a lot of stress on Limited, especially tricolor. They had to bend some things in order to make it easy to play those colors.
The Tri-lands are especially bound to this. As Mark Rosewater says, if your theme isn't in common, it's not your theme. Similarly, if casual players can't play it, then what's the point? In order to get casual players (Who frequently don't have large quantities of rares) the ability to play lots of three color decks, they printed aggressive duals.
Think of Theros as the opposite of that theory. They gave us some time to play with crazy mana bases. Checklands + Shock lands was fun, but it's very easy to get into 3 color good stuff range. Wizards is now trying to punish three color decks to focus more on two color decks. That means worse duals.
So it makes sense that the colors I can't play as are Red and Green. Mostly Green though. I just can't play ramp spells. It feels weird and wrong every time I do it. Why waste a turn and cards to play lands? I can do that for free every turn. They're awful in the late game too. Mana dorks are even worse. They're temporary lands that are very easily destroyed.
Then again I play a lot of multiplayer, which is a weird strange little format.
Imagine if we found out that Sarkhan was still Sarkhan the Mad and he was just getting a new artwork next set? Yeah, people would be pretty pissed.
How about this argument: How can you invest money into cards if you know that the price could drop in just 6 months? If Wizards of the Coast prints expensive cards all willy-nilly then it could lead to people not buying cards now and instead just waiting for future printing. That leads to people not buying cards, which is bad.
Instead we have a system that rewards people for buying cards. It's a good idea to buy cards like the Fetch and Shock Lands when they are printed as the price is low supply is up and once the set begins to cycle out in a few years the price is surely going to go up.
it's a tough situtation for Wizards as there aren't a lot of easy answers.
People for years have been complaining about the prices for Shocklands and wanting Wizards to reprint them. For YEARS I couldn't stop hearing people ask for Shocklands reprints. So Wizards finally got around to reprinting them in RtR. A year later all that did was change that tune to complaining about Fetchlands. I am positive that if Wizards reprinted Fetchands tomorrow, Mtg fans would find some new thing to complain about.
I think it's telling that you will find Standard control players run the Scry lands OVER shocklands.
You can see in the most recent GP control players using 12 Scry lands and only 5-6 Shocklands. They are using a full playset of Scrylands before they fill up on Shocklands! This isn't the sign of 'We don't have many options after Shocklands, It's that or guild gates.' this is the sign of 'Can be more useful than Shocklands.'
obviously this only applies in Standard as the syngery betwen Fetch/Shock/Check is just much more powerful, and the formats are a lot faster where coming into play tapped can be a more serious drawback.
They may not be god tier modern masters, but they aren't the garbage that everyone complains about either.
I also loved the Shadowmoore/Eventide series partially due to just how many cycles those sets had.
So no, I don't think they are overdoing cycles.
Ok, on the first level, I do think it's important that everyone stops trying to put Theros Block in their own box when Wizards clearly has their own vision for it. The vision seems to be pretty clear; Find a way to make Enchantment Creatures Work. A big portion of Theros design seems to be placed with that in mind.
So while this is an Enchantment Block, as a much larger quantity of cards are Enchantments, it's not the typical Enchantment Block.
I also respect Wizards decision to try to make Enchantments matter in a way that was different from Artifacts. Those asking for "Affinity for Enchantments" are just being silly.
I don't feel that there is a flaw with Wizards vision, but I do think it might have to do with it's presentation, specifically the preview. Calling it an "Enchantment Block" has certainly led to some big misunderstandings and a lot of hurt players. I can see why they would not want to advertise it as an Enchantment Creature Block because that would ruin some of the surprise, but it has created an empty promise in some people's minds.
I think if this is going to be a lesson for Wizards it's going to be a lesson in the way they advertise their blocks, because clearly there has been some misunderstandings here.
Wizard can never catch a break can they. They print awesome Mythics, people rage at them making those cards at the higher rarity. You print a non-constructed Mythic, people rage at them for taking up a mythic slot. Either way someone was going to be unhappy.
Just remember that this was one mythic slot. You have 5 awesome Mythic Gods for you.
You can play with all of those great Multicolor cards. These lands will be played heavily in two color decks.
I think people are heavily underestimating this concept, but just for those of you who aren't getting it; 4 cipt lands is NOTHING!! With that few lands entering tapped, it's ridiculous how easy it is to plan your land drops accordingly. Not that it isn't a drawback, but if all your running is 4 of these and 4 shock lands, then your mana base is not only stronger but it's also very little difference.
What this does hurt is if your running much more than 4 cipt lands. Any deck managing something closer to 8-12 is going to have trouble; basically tricolor decks have been hurt. This means less getting greedy and playing just generic Good Stuff decks.
I think you have it reversed.
Aggro won't be stupid enough to play these... so that limits the amount of duals for aggro and hurts them a bit (less 3 color zoo good stuff decks)
Control likes these because while it comes into play tapped (which we've seen them willing to endure with the Manlands, so that really isn't a deal breaker) it also helps reach your next land drop. I think a two color control deck can work to run 4 cipt lands. They can plan accordingly.
Overall, these lands do their assigned job perfectly.
please, please, read the article previewing them before coming here. So many people making statements or asking questions that could be easily answered if you just read the article.
"Since we knew we would have all ten in the block, we went ahead right away and commissioned all ten pieces of art, which let us hold off on the decision on which duals to include in Theros until we'd had time to playtest Standard. We tried all the allieds, all of the enemies, and a few random mashups. Tom LaPille made a strong argument, though, that the previous year in Standard had extra time with the Return to Ravnica shocklands, and that the Gatecrash color pairs could use some extra time in the spotlight, so that is the model we went with. This left us with five more for the rest of the block. What will the order be for their release? You'll have to wait and see."
We've already explained that Savage Lands and Guildgates had to be placed in those rarities because of Limited. Multicolor puts a lot of stress on Limited, especially tricolor. They had to bend some things in order to make it easy to play those colors.
The Tri-lands are especially bound to this. As Mark Rosewater says, if your theme isn't in common, it's not your theme. Similarly, if casual players can't play it, then what's the point? In order to get casual players (Who frequently don't have large quantities of rares) the ability to play lots of three color decks, they printed aggressive duals.
Think of Theros as the opposite of that theory. They gave us some time to play with crazy mana bases. Checklands + Shock lands was fun, but it's very easy to get into 3 color good stuff range. Wizards is now trying to punish three color decks to focus more on two color decks. That means worse duals.