- Stapler
- Registered User
-
Member for 12 years, 11 months, and 23 days
Last active Wed, Oct, 2 2019 23:09:11
- 0 Followers
- 1,231 Total Posts
- 178 Thanks
-
Feb 4, 2014Stapler posted a message on Launch Giveaway!There are a bunch of cards I could name as my favourite, but for nostalgia reasons I have to go with Kiln Fiend for being in my favourite colour and combining two of my favourite things - casting lots of spells and doing a bunch of direct damage - into one card, as well as being from the set I started with.Posted in: Announcements
- To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
This, and not only do you have to fill your deck with cards you may not want to be playing in order to play Kuldotha Phoenix (artifacts), but if you don't draw enough of them/your opponent gets rid of them, you don't get any value. With the new phoenix, you just have to play burn spells, which red decks want to do anyway, and you get value for days!
It's not a guarantee, but this duder certainly seems like he'll see play.
Bloodthirst was expected.
Ehhh...dies is really...simple. I agree with the others that said that they prefer some measure of precision in their terminology, and dies is definitely not as precise as I want it to be. I think I'll be okay with it so long as the next thing they simplify is "Target player puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard" to "target player mills X cards", so that they're consistent with their need to simplify things. I can't say that I used anything but "dies" IRL to describe a creature going from field to grave, though.
Huh...Chandra's Phoenix is a 1CC 2/2, just like our previously spoiled Gideon's Avenger...Bloodthirst...can we call those 2 cards official now?
Why does having new art have to mean that they aren't reprints?
WotC isn't going to print new versions of planeswalkers in core sets; it's a complete waste of an opportunity to see a planeswalker change and become someone different, which is what getting a new planeswalker card is supposed to represent. Imagine if M10 had Elspeth, Knight-Errant in it (instead of Ajani) and M11 had Elspeth Tirel, which was not printed til Scars. Why did she become someone different? Why did her abilities and mana cost change? We don't know that, because the core set isn't about some event happening, it's just a collection of cards meant to introduce people to the game (and until that changes - and I have a feeling it won't for a long while - we'll never see new PWs in the core set). Randomly throwing planeswalkers into a flavourless set, both old ones given new cards and new ones they want to introduce (like the merfolk PW that was spoiled), will make a large number of the people who care about the flavour of planeswalkers seriously enraged (myself included).
Mutagenic Growth would have been fine even in the non-infect aggro deck we're drafting if we didn't have so much phybrid. As it is, we need to watch how many life loss effects we put into this deck (I swear, if we get passed 4 Necrogen Scudders...), and since we're not green and the Growth is only marginally playable outside of infect anyway, I don't think this is the pick.
Vault Skirge actually seems reasonable in this deck. He's an aggressive 1 drop that can offset some of the life we're paying for all of these phybrid costs, he can only get better with equipment, and with Mortis Dogs, there's a decent chance we play black (especially if the Dogs in the first pack wheel), which means the Skirge isn't "just another life loss card" (though he's still probably more of a 23rd card than anything else). And if the next pack has Rage Extractor and nothing else, and we wheel another Skirge... geeeeeze.
I think the pick is Vault Skirge, but there's a good chance none of these cards are making our deck anyway.
Only if there's nothing else in the pack worth taking, and even then I don't think we should play it anyways. I'll quote my post from p1p4 discussion for my reasoning:
I mean, if we end up picking up one more phybrid card AND we don't have anything too spectacular that we could put in our deck instead, ok, but I just really don't want to be playing cards that could end up just doing nothing.
Still getting shipped Blighted Agents (that we missed the boat for a while ago), and Destruction is slow and puts us into 3-colours/forces us to drop one of our current picks (I'm not splashing for weak artifact removal).
The flavour of her deck suggests to me that she has affinity for large sea creatures (serpents, krakens etc.), so we might see more of these "huge scary sea monsters" to play up to the "Horror lurks within" aspect of Innistrad, which could mean Kraken/Leviathan tribal (or at least have them be the main tribe of blue a la elves in scars), which would be supremely cool.
I think she's likely to be mono-blue (her description and art doesn't suggest anything very green, aside from her fondness of large creatures, I suppose).
For card suggestions, equipment (i.e. Swords, good ol' Greaves) are a nice way of circumventing your imposed restriction, and cards that grant multiple attack phases and make your creatures hard to block/tap creatures your opponents controls will help you get in for damage with your underpowered squad (so stuff like Savage Beating, Aggravated Assault, Waves of Aggression for more combat phases, and the aforementioned Akroma's Memorial and stuff like Sleep to let you get in).
You should note that things like Memorial and Overrun will turn off Muraganda Petroglyphs since your guys stop being creatures without abilities, so keep that in mind when you're playing around with the Glyphs or when you're deciding how many ability-granting cards you want in your deck.
Angel it up. Gogo B/W aggro lifedrain beat-fliers!
Defensive Stance is just bad. Don't need to explain that.
I don't like Glistener Elf in sealed or draft. It gets in for its few points in the early game, and then becomes absolutely terrible. It doesn't look like we're trying to Infect people, so I'll definitely pass.
Victorious Destruction is interesting. Picking it up now allows us to not have to make the choice between artifact removal and a better creature later in the draft (i.e. the choice between Golem Artisan and Shatter might be a bit tougher if we don't already have artifact removal). It's very expensive, but it's not terrible.
Mortis Dogs is quite good. It will almost assuredly get to deal 4 to your opponent, and it starts to get pretty stupid with equipment. It synergizes the best with the cards we picked up out of the rest of these cards.
Throatseeker is a big dude, but it doesn't synergize well with our aggressive picks, and it doesn't seem we're infecting them. I think I'll also say the same for Blighted Agent (who would be much better if we want to infect people for whatever reason).
Agreeing with urafever on why we shouldn't take Souleater; we're going to kill ourselves with all this phybrid mana, and he's just a random dork. It's be so awesome if we go 5-colour and get passed a late Etched Monstrosity, though.
Raptor is ok, but uh, not what this deck is trying to do.
The Shrine is not good.
And then there's Praetor's Grasp. I should stress that this is not a bomb (even though it can grab your opponent's one), but it's a card you should be playing if you're in black. The problem is that we currently have no idea what colours we are, and it doesn't synergize well with the rest of the cards we chose since it's so damn slow, and sometimes it just doesn't do anything relevant. I think this might have been the pick if we took Grim Affliction p1p2, but since we're still open and have a bunch of aggressive stuff we should take cards that go well with our current archetype.
Looking at the pack, the only signals I can read are people aren't drafting blue infect (as Blighted Agent is strictly better than Plague Stinger, ignoring colours), and that black MIGHT be open, as Dogs and Grasp are both solid, though it's probably still too early to tell.
I think the pick is between Dogs and Destruction, since I'd rather have Dogs than Grasp in the kind of deck we're drafting, whereas Destruction is removal that allows us to take "better" cards later in the draft. I'm not sure which right now, but I'd be happy with either.
EDIT: Heh, well, I might as well add SOME content to this post.
I earnestly hope we don't try and draft Rage Extractor, let alone put it in our deck. Yes, we just picked 3 (soon 4) phybrid cards in a row. Yes, when you have a deck full of phybrid mana cards, Extractor becomes a pretty big game. Two problems, though:
1. We need a deck full of phyrbid mana cards. This is, very, VERY unlikely to happen. In NNS, or NNN? Maybe. But NBS leaves us with only 15 possible cards that work with extractor, one of which is a land, and of which has to be the extractor itself. That means 13 cards to pick from, around half of which must be phybrid (and GOOD), which is extremely unlikely.
2. We need to draw the cards in the right order in order for Extractor to be a pretty big game. Legionnaire-Legionnaire-Driller-AoA-Extraction? Yeah, that's a series of draws and plays that doesn't do anything for us. I'd like to have as few dead cards as possible in my decks, please.
I remember there was some discussion about this in p1p1 (which had an Extractor in it), and I thought I'd make my feelings clear on this. I'm also quite sure Sene was just kidding around here (or at least, I hope :P), but yeah, I don't think Extractor should be making our deck even if we wheel nothing else in the pack and take it just 'cause.
You and me both, man.
Let's take Driller, hope we open Tempered Steel is Scars, and move on.