Quote from Josephine_Ciendeilio »Ugh, I have no idea whats with everyone else. The schemes are great. There is actually quite a few good reprints within these decks.
Also if I have to point this out, for everyone who is like "I won't buy it", congrats, your sending a message to WotC that Archenemy isn't desired. For people at the WotC whose jobs it is to analyze sales and surveys, the product could wind-up reading as "Mixed". Which means they write it off as a bad idea, that the customers wouldn't want a repeat of it again, that its not worth it to WOTC to print another Archenemy product. Have fun chewing on that knowledge.
I'm a consumer that is not satified with the product they provided. I shouldn't be greatefull for something i don't want to buy. This is my opinion, if you like the product and want to buy it so do it. Its not our fault that it gets mixed review. Look at the Commander products, they have great value and therefore they sell well because more consumers desire them. Don't try to guilt trip us that don't want a product that isn't for us. Its our money afterall.
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You're definitely no alone. I just can't keep up with all of the new releases and cards, or even the story. I wasn't a huge fan of Innistrad, due to it coming out around the time all media was like "VAMPIRES, ZOMBIES, WEREWOLVES, VAMPIRES VS. WEREWOLVES" and I was plain tired of it at that time, still a little tired of it.
I'm definitely paying less attention to Magic, it also could be I haven't played a game of it 9 months due to Covid and home life (renting from family sucks).
It doesn't help that I extremely loathe UB and dislike the D&D set based on crossovers entering Magic in general. There's too much stuff being released between Secret Lairs, 2x-3x as many sets coming out, multiple booster types (seen 2 new boosters come out the last two years), and we have another set being rammed into this year for no reason. That doesn't even mention Magic trying to push other forms of media and how one of those has already failed, and it's quite likely the rest won't do well either.
Between not playing and not able to keep up as much Magic is certainly losing its luster.
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-Lumbering Lightshield is basically just Elite Spellbinder, how many times are you casting the same singular card repeatedly that's not Uro to see any use from that effect?
-Davriel's Withering could have just been two -1/-1 counters. Seems like this is digital only strictly because they didn't want to do weird +X/+Y counters like we had long ago. I get perpetually affects a card permanently (not sure why they didn't use that word instead) but it feels weird.
-Davriel is basically a new Urza with various effects, this makes sense.
-Plaguecrafter's Familiar feels off not having to reveal what you did it to. Seems like this would have just been in Ikoria and given a deathtouch counter.
-Subversive Acolyte is just Figure of Destiny styles of creatures, but you only get one choice. Why does this need to be digital only again? Was remembering this singular choice any worse than remembering if a creature is monstrous?
-Seek not making you reveal does make sense in digital to some degree, but....why though?
-Conjure is Hearthstone. 100% Hearthstone.
Most of what is being seen here is barely worthy of requiring digital only. I'm just not seeing the reason past dipping their toe in before they unleash a deluge of digital only nonsense, like they did with Secret Lairs or UB.
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And Maro stated that Magic would never have crossovers and yet here we are with three having happened already and another two that we know of on the way. Believe it or not, but Maro is not the final word when it comes to Magic and he makes plenty of mistakes within Magic. He says a lot of things that are contradictory.
White drawing cards from life gain or small creatures is no more a color pie break as red dealing direct damage or blue having efficient small creatures. Survival Cache is based on life gain, Oloro is primarily white caring about life gain, just a splash of black, and blue is just tacked on. Even Bygone Bishop would be considered small creature draw akin to Mentor of the Meek.
If drawing by life gain and small creatures is such a problem perhaps that might be why white is so behind when it comes to card draw and general power. If green can care about large creatures why can't white care about small creatures? If white isn't the color caring about life gain to draw cards then should be? Which color is it appropriate for? Back in the day blue could do everything in the name of the color pie, nowadays outside of countering spells green can do basically anything. Pretty sure we can give white life gain/small creature draw.
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Mentor of the Meek proves you wrong. You're gonna have to do an entire mental Olympics and a marathon to explain how "white caring about small creatures" and white gaining life from creatures entering the battlefield is a color pie break, 'cause I'd love to hear it.
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Rumor Mill is defacto News section at this point. Also, we couldn't put actual spoilers in this area either then since they're not rumors. Get used to the fact that this is the News subforum with the wrong name.
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I'm confused, are the bannings out of control or are you mad that they haven't banned more cards?
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1. Is losing the core set going to impact Standard too much? We saw what losing core set for years did to Standard and considering we only have single digit reprints in this set could it be possible the loss could once again negatively impact Standard both before the much needed rotation and even after even when Ikoria and Eldraine leave.
2. Did this need to be a D&D set? Honestly, it seems like besides very specific places/characters of D&D a majority of what see here in this set could have showed up in Magic normally. Even D&D owned monsters could have showed up, since WotC owns them, like Beholders as an example. I feel like if you throw out the legendaries and the +2 Mace this could have easily been just a normal Magic set.
As their first real attempt with crossovers and with UB on the horizon I look at this set and how well WotC adapted D&D to the game and overall it's....not promising for the future. I can't speak of many of the legendaries (as I only know Drizzt, Lolth, Tiamit, and The Deck), but the overall adaptation of D&D here is not very good. The Tarrasque and other simple D&D spells are not done well (Shocking Grasp and Ray of Enfeeblement as the worst examples) or miss the mark (The Deck of Many Things) which is strange as they literally have 5+ editions to correctly translate them into Magic.
When it comes to LotR and Warhammer coming up I have no expectations as I am only familiar with LotR and not to crazy degree, only movies, but even so I look at this set here and with it feeling a bit underwhelming I can only wonder how well they can do it with franchises that will be much harder to adapt to Magic. When you see that D&D should have been fairly easy to do and seeing easy T-Ball pitches being made and still missing it only cements the idea, at least in my mind, that UB might only do well financially thanks to collectors rather than for game play.
In the end this set is just kind of okay, it has some neat things, but did nothing to assure me that these UB/crossovers are a good thing for Magic as a whole. I like D&D, and out of all the UB stuff I like this the most, but I still feel this should have stayed the far away from Magic.
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I think dragons are a special case because of their colors/elements, we know chromatic dragons are generally evil, but something evil can still be different colors. For Shocking Grasp a general damage spell being an offensive reduction is strange, to say the least.
Why wasn't this card Ray of Enfeeblement? The spell literally reduces something's offensive power, it would have fit perfectly.