I think that Panoramas and Lairs are efficient untapped solutions also can make lairs/Attedants with the cardname of new Commanders or Wedge Panoramas to give more diversity.
I definitely gave you a thumbs up for this post.
While I personally love the Lairs and they've never seen a reprint, they unfortunately have the Karoo/Ravnica bounce land issue in that less experience players will want to play them on turn two without having a two-drop to play to avoid having to discard to hand size at end of turn. For ease of learning, WotC will probably default to the more mechanically simplistic Alara/Khans tri-lands instead for these scenarios. This design space also doesn't eat into the "56 new Magic cards" in the set as a whole.
Many people have spent a lot of time and energy acquiring those cards. Many (myself included, and I'm hardly a "collector" or "speculator") have already seen their collections take a massive hit from this set being printed as is. That's fine as far as I'm concerned, because it gives other players a window to acquire these rare cards at a reduced price, and these prices will surely bounce back over time--probably relatively quickly, if the previous "Masters" sets are any indication. I'll somehow make do in the meantime, and I'm sure I'll take advantage of this window as well, because I've always wanted a Karakas and a full set of Force of Wills.
This! I personally own eight copies of Mana Crypt including a foil judge promo and have been invested in them since 1997 or so. Am I bitter about it being reprinted? Not at all! I'm glad others in my Commander group can now also experience the bitter defeat of killing one's self via cursed die rolls!
Seriously though, I am a collector and a speculator and I'm still okay with Mana Crypt getting reprinted and my cards taking a secondary market hit. These reprints were too long in coming.
You might have made a thing, but that doesn't mean this isn't just a 2 mana 0/1 with " : Add to your mana pool." This should have at least been a functional reprint of Manakin.
Yes, this really rubs me the wrong way with the bemoaning MaRo makes over losing card names. There's an existing number of viable alternatives in this slot that would've functioned very similarly (and possibly even more synergistically within the Limited environment): Manakin Mind Stone Prismatic Lens Thought Vessel
The whole "we have to make bad cards for Limited and to make other cards look good" argument is wearing a bit thin at this point when there's already enough bad cards to recycle that haven't seen a reprint ever. It's the equivalent of printing Unhinged-style half-mana basic lands because suddenly "basic lands are too good." Magic players can judge the basic resources well enough. There's a reason we don't see Eager Cadet or Squire getting a reprint anymore.
Remind me why they couldn't just reprint Counterspell and be done with this nonsense?
I remember discussing Counterspell's mana cost back in 2002 with a friend of mine. We both assessed that Counterspell should really cost 2.5 mana when compared on-the-board removal of the time and later counterspells. Apparently R&D agreed, but since half-mana only exists in Unhinged, Cancel and its many variants replaced it.
A tangential question: Why hasn't Counterspell seen a reprint since Jace vs. Chandra? It would've been a welcome addition to any of the Commander decks, for example. Planechase? Archenemy? Conspiracy?
I hope people who were sure we would get Enemy BattleLands will hear you and stop thinking we'll get them. It was so easy to see we wouldn't have got them by the situation of the manabase in Standard, I really can't see how people expected them.
There was one article that said they would print full cycles of lands in each block. It happened only once after that (Scrylands) and never again since that. Its never going to happen with the new block structure too.
This might be why people may have/had the expectation of a full cycle of tango lands:
Back to the Refuges. We can all safely assume that Wizards has decided that the Invasion tap lands are not good enough anymore. We may have fond memories of Coastal Tower and Shivan Oasis, but the time has come when lands just need to be better. Creatures have gotten stronger, spells have always been insane, and lands just sat in this awkward place of necessity.
I find Jacob Van Lunen's statements from 2009 regarding #MTGZEN quite amusing considering the #MTGINV tap duals are back in function just six years later as of #MTGOGW and after a full cycle of the Refuges were printed at COMMON in #MTGKTK. Even more so that the enemy colored tap dual appear to be absent yet again after these further comments starting in 2013:
While it made thematic sense to separate enemy and allied color fixing in the past, we have come around to the definite conclusion that it is just plain incorrect from a game-play perspective. This is one of these situations where game play should just trump flavor...
What we plan to do is use the slot of rare dual lands in the core set as a tool to help balance out Standard and make sure that we have enough mana fixing in the format year after year.
I mentioned last year that we were moving more toward printing full cycles of lands in a block to make the mana work for Constructed and for Block Constructed. That isn't changing...
So, if Magic 2015 only has five lands, how will Standard cope? Have we changed our thinking on dual lands?
The answer is no—the statement I made last year is still true—our hope moving forward with Standard is to make sure that players have the mana base to make their decks work, and part of that means that players in Block will also have adequate mana.
In May 2015, that ideology apparently shifted back to shorting complete cycles for dual lands:
We still have plans as we make future blocks to allow people to cast their spells, but we are much less likely to do full cycles in a block; just due to how that will impact Standard. As I mentioned earlier, that's not a 'never' thing, but something you won't see every time.
That's not to say we don't like consistency, it's one of the reasons we put so many dual lands in our sets, but there should be a reasonable tradeoff for consistency.
There's certainly a balance of lands that produce all ten color pairs right now in Standard, but not having a complete cycle of tango lands that include the enemy-colored pairs feels really wrong and feels like a real kick in the gut to budget-oriented Commander players with access to fetches, but not ABU duals.
Maybe, but maybe not? Depends on what the rules definition of the <> symbol is. The way that reads under MTG parlance is that Kozilek can cost WWUUBBRG<><> (which must be colorless mana created by any source).
Solved the problem. Windows 8 doesn't really have users have administrative control even if your account is made as an administrator. I know, right? So I had to activate the actual administrator account and proceed like that.
You can also right-click on the application icon and choose "Run as administrator."
Feels like a Mizzium Mortars alternative when I normally would just play Mizzium Mortars, which I currently don't. Alternatively, Breath of Malfegor and Stormbreath Dragon do a better multiplayer Lava Axe impression and I've never seen them played. Unfortunately, red has sweepers already with Blasphemous Act and Chain Reaction that just hit the points players need more than this. I do like KingChewie's point that it hits planeswalkers too though.
It's so sad when cards like this are on the cusp of being something I'd want to play. If it was stackable on the same target like The_Return_of_Skullfer had hoped, then we'd be somewhere.
I had started with Presence of Gond in the deck, but it's hard to get it and Midnight Guard into play at the same time. I ended up cutting it to ensure I had a cards that weren't entirely relying on a second card to do real work.
Thanks for suggesting Sporemound, I've been mentally confusing it with Bramble Elemental for some reason. A common version of Zendikar's Roil is the type of value this deck can utilize.
Pallid Mycoderm is something I had missed entirely. I may have to rework the deck to maximize Pallid Mycoderm's impact. Since I'm mostly focused on generating larger token threats off of stronger populate effects or Bird/Spirit tokens with natural evasion, I feel like I don't have enough Saprolings in Selesnya Evangel, Sprout Swarm, and Sporoloth Ancient. I did also forget about the relevance of Night Soil against Tortured Existence/Grim Harvest/Disturbed Burial engines. Good reminder and I've been looking for better card advantage to replace Lace with Moonglove.
The Eldrazi Spawn generators were originally in the deck, but never quite felt that they did enough. I believe I cut them for Leonin Armorguard and Suppression Bonds.
I know this deck is also sorely missing Darksteel Pendant. That will be rectified.
Breath of Life, huh? I knew it was a common, but never felt like was an auto-include. I can see it in Orzhov decks to enable reanimator strategies, but I'm not seeing anything that I'm needing to recur in this deck (at the moment). Wouldn't Elven Cache be more flexible?
Currently my shop is building Pauper Commander decks based on the deck building constraints posted in Adam Styborski's article "Cheap Date". So unlike other Pauper metas, we're narrowed down to purely the ten MTGO allied generals. (Later this may change when the format gets stale.) This is my tuned Selesnya tokens build.
The deck seeks to win by token swarm while pumping creatures with Overrun-type effects (Sigil Blessing, Bold Defense, Kytheon's Tactics, Marshaling Cry, Leonin Armorguard) and supplements with the best aggressive common equipment and Rancor. Evasive Spirit tokens and tokens that are 2/4, 3/3, or 4/4 are the focus for populate effects. Creatures and auras that leave a token behind when dying are also high inclusions in order to grind further value out of combat steps.
Both Relentless Rats and Shadowborn Apostle could essentially be re-mechanized as "basic" creatures. "Basic" is already defined in the game and can be easily applied to any card type. Imagine a spell like this:
Stop to Think 1U
Basic Sorcery
Draw a card.
It's a feasible card that does not break the game outside of Thrumming Stone, much like how a basic 1/1 creature with a type costing one colored mana wouldn't break the game.
I definitely gave you a thumbs up for this post.
While I personally love the Lairs and they've never seen a reprint, they unfortunately have the Karoo/Ravnica bounce land issue in that less experience players will want to play them on turn two without having a two-drop to play to avoid having to discard to hand size at end of turn. For ease of learning, WotC will probably default to the more mechanically simplistic Alara/Khans tri-lands instead for these scenarios. This design space also doesn't eat into the "56 new Magic cards" in the set as a whole.
This! I personally own eight copies of Mana Crypt including a foil judge promo and have been invested in them since 1997 or so. Am I bitter about it being reprinted? Not at all! I'm glad others in my Commander group can now also experience the bitter defeat of killing one's self via cursed die rolls!
Seriously though, I am a collector and a speculator and I'm still okay with Mana Crypt getting reprinted and my cards taking a secondary market hit. These reprints were too long in coming.
Have you tried a second browser other than your main one? i.e. Firefox or Chrome?
Yes, this really rubs me the wrong way with the bemoaning MaRo makes over losing card names. There's an existing number of viable alternatives in this slot that would've functioned very similarly (and possibly even more synergistically within the Limited environment):
Manakin
Mind Stone
Prismatic Lens
Thought Vessel
The whole "we have to make bad cards for Limited and to make other cards look good" argument is wearing a bit thin at this point when there's already enough bad cards to recycle that haven't seen a reprint ever. It's the equivalent of printing Unhinged-style half-mana basic lands because suddenly "basic lands are too good." Magic players can judge the basic resources well enough. There's a reason we don't see Eager Cadet or Squire getting a reprint anymore.
I remember discussing Counterspell's mana cost back in 2002 with a friend of mine. We both assessed that Counterspell should really cost 2.5 mana when compared on-the-board removal of the time and later counterspells. Apparently R&D agreed, but since half-mana only exists in Unhinged, Cancel and its many variants replaced it.
A tangential question: Why hasn't Counterspell seen a reprint since Jace vs. Chandra? It would've been a welcome addition to any of the Commander decks, for example. Planechase? Archenemy? Conspiracy?
This might be why people may have/had the expectation of a full cycle of tango lands:
I find Jacob Van Lunen's statements from 2009 regarding #MTGZEN quite amusing considering the #MTGINV tap duals are back in function just six years later as of #MTGOGW and after a full cycle of the Refuges were printed at COMMON in #MTGKTK. Even more so that the enemy colored tap dual appear to be absent yet again after these further comments starting in 2013:
In May 2015, that ideology apparently shifted back to shorting complete cycles for dual lands:
There's certainly a balance of lands that produce all ten color pairs right now in Standard, but not having a complete cycle of tango lands that include the enemy-colored pairs feels really wrong and feels like a real kick in the gut to budget-oriented Commander players with access to fetches, but not ABU duals.
From http://www.gatheringmagic.com/news-11032014-fate-reforged-and-more-at-pax-australia/ in November of last year: "A 'solution' for a colorless basic land has been found, and this will allow for a colorless Commander preconstructed deck to be created in the future."
Maybe, but maybe not? Depends on what the rules definition of the <> symbol is. The way that reads under MTG parlance is that Kozilek can cost WWUUBBRG<><> (which must be colorless mana created by any source).
You can also right-click on the application icon and choose "Run as administrator."
It's so sad when cards like this are on the cusp of being something I'd want to play. If it was stackable on the same target like The_Return_of_Skullfer had hoped, then we'd be somewhere.
Thanks for suggesting Sporemound, I've been mentally confusing it with Bramble Elemental for some reason. A common version of Zendikar's Roil is the type of value this deck can utilize.
Pallid Mycoderm is something I had missed entirely. I may have to rework the deck to maximize Pallid Mycoderm's impact. Since I'm mostly focused on generating larger token threats off of stronger populate effects or Bird/Spirit tokens with natural evasion, I feel like I don't have enough Saprolings in Selesnya Evangel, Sprout Swarm, and Sporoloth Ancient. I did also forget about the relevance of Night Soil against Tortured Existence/Grim Harvest/Disturbed Burial engines. Good reminder and I've been looking for better card advantage to replace Lace with Moonglove.
The Eldrazi Spawn generators were originally in the deck, but never quite felt that they did enough. I believe I cut them for Leonin Armorguard and Suppression Bonds.
I know this deck is also sorely missing Darksteel Pendant. That will be rectified.
Breath of Life, huh? I knew it was a common, but never felt like was an auto-include. I can see it in Orzhov decks to enable reanimator strategies, but I'm not seeing anything that I'm needing to recur in this deck (at the moment). Wouldn't Elven Cache be more flexible?
1 Sir Shandlar of Eberyn
Creatures:
1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Brindle Shoat
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Selesnya Evangel
1 Suture Priest
1 Sandsteppe Outcast
1 Scion of the Wild
1 Soltari Visionary
1 Sylvok Replica
1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Leonin Armorguard
1 Mold Shambler
1 Ondu Giant
1 Penumbra Spider
1 Pygmy Kavu
1 Loxodon Partisan
1 Sensor Splicer
1 Silverglade Elemental
1 Sporoloth Ancient
1 Krosan Tusker
1 Maul Splicer
1 Walker of the Grove
1 Ulamog's Crusher
Artifacts:
1 Bonesplitter
1 Copper Carapace
1 Horizon Spellbomb
1 Mind Stone
1 Commander's Sphere
1 Selesnya Cluestone
1 Journey to Nowhere
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Spidersilk Armor
Auras:
1 Rancor
1 Elephant Guide
1 Moldervine Cloak
1 Snake Umbra
1 Suppression Bonds
Instants:
1 Druid's Deliverance
1 Sigil Blessing
1 Sprout Swarm
1 Sundering Growth
1 Afterlife
1 Bold Defense
1 Exile
1 Lace with Moonglove
1 Pillar of Light
1 Rending Vines
1 Rootborn Defenses
1 Elephant Ambush
1 Eyes in the Skies
1 Triplicate Spirits
1 Trostani's Judgment
Sorceries:
1 Cultivate
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Kytheon's Tactics
1 Marshaling Cry
1 Rousing of Souls
1 Topple
1 Battle Screech
1 Angelic Edict
1 Courser's Accord
1 Horncaller's Chant
1 Blossoming Sands
1 Desert
1 Drifting Meadow
1 Command Tower
1 Evolving Wilds
11 Forest
1 Glimmerpost
1 Haunted Fengraf
1 Khalni Garden
1 Naya Panorama
7 Plains
1 Quicksand
1 Radiant Fountain
1 Secluded Steppe
1 Selesnya Guildgate
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Seraph Sanctuary
1 Slippery Karst
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Tranquil Thicket
The deck seeks to win by token swarm while pumping creatures with Overrun-type effects (Sigil Blessing, Bold Defense, Kytheon's Tactics, Marshaling Cry, Leonin Armorguard) and supplements with the best aggressive common equipment and Rancor. Evasive Spirit tokens and tokens that are 2/4, 3/3, or 4/4 are the focus for populate effects. Creatures and auras that leave a token behind when dying are also high inclusions in order to grind further value out of combat steps.
Card advantage in Pauper Selesnya is fairly sparse, so the usual suspects are automatically included (Krosan Tusker, Yavimaya Elder, Horizon Spellbomb). Pygmy Kavu might be considered a weak inclusion, but the meta is heavily skewed towards Pestilence and Grey Merchant of Asphodel recursion making Pygmy Kavu a risk worth running. Because of the Grey Merchant of Asphodel recursion decks, all creature removal is exile-based when possible. Spidersilk Armor also helps fight Stench of Decay/Shrivel/Barrage of Boulders-type sweepers.
Possible card alternatives would include:
Lace with Moonglove -> Faith's Fetters
Sylvok Replica -> Caustic Caterpillars, Qasali Pridemage (Sylvok Replica blocks a lot of 2/x creatures though)
Kytheon's Tactics -> Ampryn Tactician
Horizon Spellbomb, Forest -> Expedition Map, Cloudpost (cuts the potential card advantage out of Horizon Spellbomb, but enables searching for the other half of the Locus cards when the first half is found to speed up mana)
Change Log:
Conclave Phalanx -> Suture Priest (increases the deck's aggro reach)
Skyshroud Claim -> Ondu Giant (gives another body, but less land, helps thaw out Plains for all the double-W spells)
Agreed, I hoped for a few enemy colored nuggets, but no. I had really hoped Anafenza would be black/white based on her story.
How exactly is Relentless Rats nonfunctional in Commander? Sheldon himself said it's fine: http://forum.dragonhighlander.net/EDH_Forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=127&start=17.
Stop to Think 1U
Basic Sorcery
Draw a card.
It's a feasible card that does not break the game outside of Thrumming Stone, much like how a basic 1/1 creature with a type costing one colored mana wouldn't break the game.