My favorite artifact of all time is MINDSLAVER! That card is just too wacky. I know it has seen plenty of tournement play and as much fun as it is to play out Bringer of the White Dawn and tell your opponent "hey I got the whole game from here, you just go have a Coke and a snack and I'll let you know how bad you lost in a little bit" there's another strategy with it that I just love. That's the "Big Brother Kill." After you slaver your opponent and start their turn cast Chain of Vapor to sac all their lands and bounce all their permanents into their hand then you cast Chain of Plasma and discard all their cards to kill themselves. all the time you get to say "quit hitting yourself!" "what's the matter with you, you're hitting yourself!" and that's just some of the fun available. Mindslaver is the single most sadisticly humorus card ever printed without a silver boarder. when you get into silver boarder land it becomes so insane that it is ilegal in most states as by the rules of the game you could rob somebody, or at least make them buy you drinks. One can imagine how much I giggled when I realized I could DonateAshnod's Coupon then Mindslaver for a butal robbing of my opponent's wallet. I have never actually done this, as it is immoral and nobody wouldn't just concede first even if they wouldn't just say "F you" and walk off. but still the possibilities are frightening and hilarious. one of these days I'm gonna be in a bar with my donated coupon slave deck, one of these days! Mindslaver rocks.
For my favorite deck of all time I need to take you all back to a different time and age of magic: late 1996. Mirage was the newest set on the planet and it was absolutely insane! I was fascinated by phasing (possibly the worst mechanic ever) and loved all the crazy things that could happen in Mirage. I liked control-ish decks. I liked Blue White control. things were different back then, things that were good then aren't good now. back then we had interrupts, keywords like islandhome (whatever happened to that?), and everyone knew what mono artifact meant. every deck was a creature deck, the best decks had burn and black based removal (Terror was among the most feared cards around) to back up their big, slow, creatures, and no-one played a deck with fewer than 100 cards. ok we didn't play the budding tournament scene and we weren't good players with big collections but that was part of the charm. one guy, Al, had a Black Green Red deck he called the "Super Star Destroyer" that was so big he had to stand up during his draw phase in order to reach the top card. decks were slow back then, a single 4-man game could last 2 to 8 hours. I was the ONLY guy that played white or blue decks. one day I decided I was going to make a deck and it was going to change the way everybody played. I put together a pile of quick and cheap phasing creatures, counterspells and instant phasing tricks. but it wasn't enough, I needed to have a way to get rid of creatures permanently and repeatedly. so I re-read the rules on phasing and did some searching through my collection. I found two things: 1, Phasing triggered leaves play effects but not comes into play effects; 2, I had a lot of Funeral Marches. That's right, Funeral March, from Homelands, the set even wizards doesn't like. go look it up on gatherer, I'll wait. ok back now? I figured out that even though my friends would play big scary slow creatures there were always little, mostly harmless, utility creatures and walls (everybody used walls as early defense until they could cast their Shivan Dragons and Baron Sengirs) that I could let stay on board. these got the march and then they also got Teferi's Curse. I used counterspells and instant phasing tricks to protect my small, cheap creatures and let the funeral march/curse combo keep the board clear for my attacks. I also kept the deck to a strict diet of 65 cards. today I know it was still 5 cards too fat but back then it was so skinny when I showed up with it everyone laughed at me when I told them I had in fact NOT forgotten half my deck. I was told the deck would never hold up in the long game (I was worried about that and packed a Feldon's Cane as card #65). I was told that I didn't understand how to build a deck or the game played out. I played my March-Curse deck anyway. by the time Visions came out the average deck size at our table had shrunk from 2 to 4 feet (no kidding) down to 65 to 75 cards. black knight and the black pump knights had become popular, there was even a goblins deck, games were over a lot faster and people were playing their favorite cards more often. that's how the funeral march/teferi's curse combo deck taught us about efficiency and the power of re-usable effects. even though the deck no longer works today due to rules updates (and even if it did it would suck) it is still my favorite because it marked a change in the way I played. because of what I learned from it I became a better player and everyone in my group learned some very valuable lessons. they also learned to pack enchantment kill. oh how far we have come!
I play a lot of constructed on line both casual and competative, and although I really like the art and the names and flavor of this set, I am worried. I HATED Onslaught block for its repetativeness. every dang deck was tribal, there was no variety, no cool surprises and a lot of uber powered but boring stuff. looks to me like goblins could be stupid powerful again and I'm not happy about that. Ravnica is my favorite block of all time due the variety it encouraged. that said, there are a lot of cards in the set that I like and I will play it and collect it but I think that it will be more like kamigawa for me: mostly junk with a small percentage of cards that I just love and put into many different decks. I love the lands that give you two any color shots. but then I like to make competative 3, 4, or 5 color decks.
The surprise is. . . there's no Panglacial Wurm. at least not anymore. originally I designed the deck for the casual room on MTGO. the idea was to ramp up to enough mana to cast a Panglacial Wurm out of my library by turn 4 or so. the problem was, basically, it sucked. I was using Green Seeker as one of my shuffle enablers and since I already had red decided to use some madness cards to help keep me alive until I dropped a Wurm. Biggest Surprise for me: Lighting Storm has been very good for me, yes I know it's a risk, but I haven't lost control of it once yet and I've burned some folks for pretty hefty amounts with it. so without further chitter chatter, here's the decklist:
ok I didn't list a sideboard, well mine sux, just a basic land-D and Naturalize with a trio of kindle the carnage for laughs. the sideboard isn't serious yet, but I haven't needed it much. seriously this deck has posted surprising results in the tournament practice room. I know it isn't tier 1, but it's a lot better than I expected. what do you all think? how can I make it better?
a very thought provoking article, whether people agree with you or not is not an indicator that it was good or bad, rather the more people who respond with comments, the better your article was. having said that, good article.
having said THAT, I now want to make two comments on things I think you are slightly off mark with.
Baldwyr Intimidator isn't really a new tribal card so much as it is a red herring. it's like a slight of hand trick (slight of card?) that causes you to focus so much on one thing you miss what's really going on. the focus is obviously, "Warriors and Cowards Oh MY! what else can they do with that? AWESOME!" what's really going on is that there will not be Warrior and coward interactions or even something like it. I say this because WotC has pretty recently made it very clear that they did not want creature types to have built in rules and Warrior and Coward feel, to me, a lot like Assemble and Contraption. also if you look at the Intimidator's ability without the warrior and coward parts it suddenly becomes a very familier red ability : (mana cost): target creature cannot block this turn, or Target Creature cannot block this creature this turn. So in that respect I expect we will see intimidator mechanics again, just not keyed to warrior and coward.
you said Gravestorm isn't as powerful as regular storm. I think this is way off base. how powerful would storm be if it counted spells you cast in previous turns of the game? it would be rediculous! that's basically what gravestorm does tho. ok the spell has to have been a permanent and has to still be in play, but come, on I've already seem decklists that can generate a gravestorm count of 50-ish by a pretty early turn in order to make Bitter Ordeal a viable kill card. mark my words, if they ever use gravestorm again they are going to have to be VERY careful in order to make sure it isn't the most unholy broken mechanic of all time. i'm not sure if it isn't at least in contention as it is.
good article.
you mentioned that Grinning Ignus didn't have an easy way to go infinate. well, I'm no vintage player but what about Aluren? you need 5 mana one of it red and two green. play Aluren then play and activate Ignus with the Red left over netting 2R, every time you do this you'll increase the colorless mana by 2 and keep the one R constant. so what's stopping that into a demon's fire or fireball, disentigrate, ETC.? I'm not expecting this to be an "OMFG that is so uber broken, let's build a deck around it" thing but I thought I'd mention it seeing how with any one land, a mox and a Black lotus you have the mana for a lethal turn 1 fireball. ok the right six cards in your opening hand winning the game when at least two of those six are restricted isn't going to change the format, I was just wondering if this was getting any attention.
I learned some things from your article. it often surprises me what vintage players think are good cards/effects. the street wraith didn't seem like that great of a deal to me and some of the other cards you mentioned I didn't think would ever have an impact, but like I said, I'm not a vintage player so I don't know.
out of all of these I like the Cantrip lands best. early game they fix your mana, but by the time the damage starts to get worrisome mid to late game you'll have the mana you need without them and then they can become an extra card per turn with crucible or LftL. tell me, is a Howling Mine for just you a bad thing? the others are all pretty cool, I especially like the tainted lands and the wacky mad-lands. pure power though, has to point to the cantrip lands, no doubt. the life loss is no big deal.
ok so I thik I missed something. what we have here is not two cycles of rare dual lands, one that gains opponent's life, and one that needs a land type in play to use alternate colors, but rather one cycle of dual lands with different drawbacks? do we know how many lands in the cycle? 5 or 10?
I've looked and looked at the Future-shifted cards trying to keep and open mind. my first impression was that I hated them and WTF was going on? who was trying to destroy magic? but I've settled down now and can look at them more objectively. there is a blank area in the upper right quadrant of each card that is left open because most cards don't have huge names. this will allow the mana symbols and names to be fully visible when fanned. this can be an advantage to most people, but not to me as I am used to holding my cards in a verticle spread so i can see all of the names and mana costs the way the cards are printed up to now. I like the contrast on the black and blue cards around the mana symbols, but hate the white card. Seht's Tiger is so white-washed it hurts my eyes looking at it (and I like to play white). the mana symbols themselves are very nice on the future-shifted cards. I don't feel the F-S design fixes the creature type line space issue and, as i recall, that has been more of a problem area than the name/mana cost line. the Future-shifted cards seem unbalanced with all the really important stuff on the left and nothing worth looking at on the right.
to summ up, while I don't hate the Future-shifted card frame I think that the cons out weigh the pros and I hope that it will be a flash in the pan that we never need to see again.
Planar Chaos card frames really are the best we have right now. it didn't even take any thought to know that. I've been noticing while I play that the cards that stand out, draw my eye and are most satisfying to look at are the Planar Chaos timeshifts. my only hope is that if they continue to use them, replace the white text with black.
I have very limited internet access right now and can't get wotc website to load up. Does anyone know what the policy is going to be on redeeming Time Spiral? Will I need a full set of 301 + 121 or just one or the other?
Hope this is in the right place,
thanks.
1) Both Maguses of the Jar and the Mirror have 'Sacrifice THIS' as part of the activation cost. Magus of the Disk will probably have too as it's part of Nevynirral Disk activation. So... ok, Cursed Scroll and Candelabra of Tawnos didn't have the 'sac' clause, but, as 3 out of 5 Magus have, why wouldn't they have it too? Besides, both Scroll and Candelabra were abusable as reusable effects on artifacts; won't people also abuse them if they're reusable effects on creatures?
while you're right about that making them abuseable, the reason they will not make them sac is the obvious: the original cards didn't sac. i'm thinking they figure that making them creatures makes them more vulnerable and therefor not broken. might they stilll make them sac? yes, but it would be a break from the format they seem to be following so i say no, they will not sac.
I really like all three of these cards, even tho the Evil Eye will most likely be the only tournament constructed worthy card. I didn't think they'd cost a flying Man-0-war so cheaply. I would have guessed at least 6 or 7. still a lot of cards to discover hopefully more info will be unveiled soon. ok, maybe I'm Ignorant but I'm seeing a lot of "FTW" being thrown around what the heck does that mean, "For The Win" maybe.
EDIT: @ Mad Mat: you can tell Eye is first pick because creatures and creature-removal are extremely important to limited and any card that is both is going to be better than the majority of cards printed, as a rule.
@Mozark: I would think that if they bounce your cloudskate after it came in from suspend you would be quite happy to tap the 5 mana and cast it the normal way thus bouncing another of their creautures. I learned a long time ago that you do NOT want to bounce 187 creatures in most cases.
Evil Eyes and clones and dopplegangers oh my, a deck! a deck! and what a deck too: UB counter clone-eye control. BEATING!
Phthisis - my first thought was "what a hunk of crap". but after some thought i figure that on turn 7 (either un-suspending it or casting it straight) you should have a large creature to hit and your opponent should be sorta low on life. suddenly we have a creature removal spell that doubles as a kill condition. sooner or later i'm going to see this spell hit a creature right after it gets giant-growthed or might of the oaks or something like that and i'm going to laugh. six extra damage for one green mana? who'd a thunk it?
the land is pretty ok but nothing special, I'm afraid.
I like the Pentarch Paladin Wx control will be very happy to have him i'm sure.
could it be as simple as giving you a bonus if you suspend it? say it lets you search your library for another land if comes into play from being suspended. that way you choose to either play it normally or suspend it and get a bonus later.
ok enough with the strictly this-that stuff, I don't care about any of it. what this card shows me is WOTC giving the casual player some love, and I'm all over that. this card is not bad, admit it. so it wasn't designed to be a tournament staple, so what? if you can shell out several hundred $$ for that sort of deck you probably won't need this very nice common. I speak from both sides of the fence on this since I have been a casual player since the very beginning of the game but I have recently completed my ravnica BLOCK playset and Coldsnap is well underway. yeah, I'm a casual player with a tournament quality collection.
Mindslaver rocks.
3 Browbeat
3 Char
4 Fiery Temper
8 Forest
3 Kird Ape
3 Mindless Automaton
7 Mountain
2 Reclaim
3 Scab-Clan Mauler
4 Stomping Ground
3 Greenseeker
3 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
3 Lightning Storm
4 Reckless Wurm
4 Terramorphic Expanse
ok I didn't list a sideboard, well mine sux, just a basic land-D and Naturalize with a trio of kindle the carnage for laughs. the sideboard isn't serious yet, but I haven't needed it much. seriously this deck has posted surprising results in the tournament practice room. I know it isn't tier 1, but it's a lot better than I expected. what do you all think? how can I make it better?
having said THAT, I now want to make two comments on things I think you are slightly off mark with.
Baldwyr Intimidator isn't really a new tribal card so much as it is a red herring. it's like a slight of hand trick (slight of card?) that causes you to focus so much on one thing you miss what's really going on. the focus is obviously, "Warriors and Cowards Oh MY! what else can they do with that? AWESOME!" what's really going on is that there will not be Warrior and coward interactions or even something like it. I say this because WotC has pretty recently made it very clear that they did not want creature types to have built in rules and Warrior and Coward feel, to me, a lot like Assemble and Contraption. also if you look at the Intimidator's ability without the warrior and coward parts it suddenly becomes a very familier red ability : (mana cost): target creature cannot block this turn, or Target Creature cannot block this creature this turn. So in that respect I expect we will see intimidator mechanics again, just not keyed to warrior and coward.
you said Gravestorm isn't as powerful as regular storm. I think this is way off base. how powerful would storm be if it counted spells you cast in previous turns of the game? it would be rediculous! that's basically what gravestorm does tho. ok the spell has to have been a permanent and has to still be in play, but come, on I've already seem decklists that can generate a gravestorm count of 50-ish by a pretty early turn in order to make Bitter Ordeal a viable kill card. mark my words, if they ever use gravestorm again they are going to have to be VERY careful in order to make sure it isn't the most unholy broken mechanic of all time. i'm not sure if it isn't at least in contention as it is.
you mentioned that Grinning Ignus didn't have an easy way to go infinate. well, I'm no vintage player but what about Aluren? you need 5 mana one of it red and two green. play Aluren then play and activate Ignus with the Red left over netting 2R, every time you do this you'll increase the colorless mana by 2 and keep the one R constant. so what's stopping that into a demon's fire or fireball, disentigrate, ETC.? I'm not expecting this to be an "OMFG that is so uber broken, let's build a deck around it" thing but I thought I'd mention it seeing how with any one land, a mox and a Black lotus you have the mana for a lethal turn 1 fireball. ok the right six cards in your opening hand winning the game when at least two of those six are restricted isn't going to change the format, I was just wondering if this was getting any attention.
I learned some things from your article. it often surprises me what vintage players think are good cards/effects. the street wraith didn't seem like that great of a deal to me and some of the other cards you mentioned I didn't think would ever have an impact, but like I said, I'm not a vintage player so I don't know.
to summ up, while I don't hate the Future-shifted card frame I think that the cons out weigh the pros and I hope that it will be a flash in the pan that we never need to see again.
Planar Chaos card frames really are the best we have right now. it didn't even take any thought to know that. I've been noticing while I play that the cards that stand out, draw my eye and are most satisfying to look at are the Planar Chaos timeshifts. my only hope is that if they continue to use them, replace the white text with black.
Hope this is in the right place,
thanks.
while you're right about that making them abuseable, the reason they will not make them sac is the obvious: the original cards didn't sac. i'm thinking they figure that making them creatures makes them more vulnerable and therefor not broken. might they stilll make them sac? yes, but it would be a break from the format they seem to be following so i say no, they will not sac.
EDIT: @ Mad Mat: you can tell Eye is first pick because creatures and creature-removal are extremely important to limited and any card that is both is going to be better than the majority of cards printed, as a rule.
@Mozark: I would think that if they bounce your cloudskate after it came in from suspend you would be quite happy to tap the 5 mana and cast it the normal way thus bouncing another of their creautures. I learned a long time ago that you do NOT want to bounce 187 creatures in most cases.
Evil Eyes and clones and dopplegangers oh my, a deck! a deck! and what a deck too: UB counter clone-eye control. BEATING!
the land is pretty ok but nothing special, I'm afraid.
I like the Pentarch Paladin Wx control will be very happy to have him i'm sure.