For ****s sake I want to try out a new deck and NO JOKE - 6 mono red opponents in a row. Are they all retarded? Why play it in Free Play? Goddamn ******* handicapped morons.
She is a very good card, but she's not unbeatable. Fast aggro decks like monored tend to run over decks she's in. Control decks are able to counter her. Because her static relies on a specific land type (Forest) it influences your deck so two color is pretty much the max she can be in. And of course if you drop her turn 5 and your opponent has a Bedevil, contempt, or elder spell you haven't gotten much out of her.
That being said she excels against midrange and once resolved against a control player is outstanding.
Plenty of other removal can kill/slow her down. Also she can be yoinked...
Never happens though. Yoinked? By the time I get her out, and she doubles my mana, next turn I can drop something massive, or mass manipulate two PWs. The doubling of mana really solidifies her place
She is a very good card, but she's not unbeatable. Fast aggro decks like monored tend to run over decks she's in. Control decks are able to counter her. Because her static relies on a specific land type (Forest) it influences your deck so two color is pretty much the max she can be in. And of course if you drop her turn 5 and your opponent has a Bedevil, contempt, or elder spell you haven't gotten much out of her.
That being said she excels against midrange and once resolved against a control player is outstanding.
Yeah, hard removal is the only way to stop her, but for whatever it's worth in my games that's not super frequent. If it's against control you can usually bait one out with a Vivian or Ugin first, then Nissa next turn seems to stick. They pretty much have to have the removal in hand when she hits, even if they can nuke her before she ults they cant handle her AND the board and dont last too much longer. This is all assuming she out quick enough. If the game has dragged on too long and they have the mana then they can deal with both, hence why getting her out fast is priority.
Her value is just insane and (beside maybe Liliana which takes longer because black doesnt have the ramp green does) is one of the only cards that once they hit, if you dont have hard removal for it it's game over. After getting stomped anytime I ran into one of her decks, I built one myself and I am amazed this deck isn't everywhere. I have about a 70% win rate with it right now. It's nearly unstoppable against most decks besides maybe Esper Control, but still consistent against that. Honestly, the only way I lose is if I dont draw one of my Nissas by like turn 7 and am facing a fast aggro deck. Her value just takes a deck from meh to an unstoppable force - double mana, endless creature creation (with vigilance and haste mind you) and she takes two turns after you drop her to hit her ult. If you get her early along with some ramp you can have her out turn three and if you do, it's GG. I feel dirty playing her, because it feels like a card that they let slip or something. Like it's TOO good.
So with the Ravnica Story events, a couple of the stained glass planeswalker styles will be given as rewards, some can be bought through the store and 5 (one per week) will be obtainable via codes.
For this week it's Arlinn via "OverTheMoon"
The other four will be Ob Nixilis, Teyo, Narset and Nahiri (at least if the current tooltips for the styles are accurate).
The new event is so horribly boring. The games take forever. It's entirely RNG based. It's just an awful slog where you need to race through 80 cards looking for a Liliana.
Seriously. Why can't I experiment with jank decks anywhere? Why can't you escape the obnoxious Control/Aggro meta at all? Who goes into the free play mode to play a mono red deck or ******* Esper Control? It boggles my mind. Take it to Ranked! What are you so ******* afraid of? What kind of massive pants *****ting coward do you have to be to need to play Esper Control in an unranked free play mode? Jesus Christ.
I didn't realize the new Chandra's -7 ability, in addition to letting the owner play the top 7 cards of their library, hits you for 7 damage since that counts as "removing loyalty." Absolutely insane. So here is a Walker you can't realistically attack with creatures unless you want to eat face damage vs a deck who probably has you down to 10 or less hp before even casting her, AND has a "win the game" finale ability in case you try to go over her.
So they recently add this feature to the game where you can use your creatures to attack another player's planeswalkers. This new feature will allow you to interact with planeswalkers in an obvious and simple way with cards you should already be playing.
On a serious note, they did alter a number of uncommons, rares and even a few commons to specifically answer planeswalkers. There is a lot of paper in the format to answer the rocks. Planeswalkers are showing up more than ever because there are more than ever but they are far from dominating.
Trouble is they keep pushing creatures and planeswalkers, and this is great for anyone who is 30. But for anyone who played in the old days, Mtg was about stack interaction, artifacts, and enchantments. People playing creatures were the ones suffering, and that is pretty much how a lot of old timers prefer it.....
Not to mention you need a creature who can reach a walker. All the powerful walkers have a first turn defense - Teferi, Ili, Bolas, Vivians. Turn 1, and for many their +1 is defense. When the new Ili walker drops you have TWO turns to destroy it before it;s game over and shes going to either drop a 2/2 defender turn one or kill two of your creatures. Vivian takes your flier. If your opponent drops one and then the other in two turns its GG. There's no play around for a lot of them other than have a PW removal spell in hand, but PW are going to outnumber your removal spells. What do you run 4 Vraska Contempt? Maybe 4 Bedevil? 4 Vivian A, 4 Vivian B, 4 Ili. The only way the game is playable is because you get Thought Erasure on your first three turns so you can kill them in hand before they drop. I dont like cards that are "press X to win the game" and a lot of the walkers are realllllllly close to that.
Walkers .... way too powerful. Nissa, Who Shakes the World for example is absolutely insane and almost impossible to deal with once it's out if you're not playing a control deck that has PW removal spells.
It's not that bad.
Being a 5-cmc walker, and belonging to a mono-coloured archetype, I have no problem with it having a powerful effect.
Being a 20-yr MTG player, I kinda like a big swing in the game to something different. Once the new sets come out after rotation, I'm sure there will be a large amount of answers being printed.
5-cmc that they can drop on turn 3 thanks to ramp. Green spells are undercosted because they dont take into consideration the fact that they are pumping out mana sources 2-to-1 or 3-to-1
Jesus Christ man, I'm playing a duo-color deck and I've whittled it down from 25 lands to 20 lands and I still just played like 3 games in a row where I drew 4 lands for every one spell. I dont even know what to say about this anymore.
You mean you dont think it takes me 3 minutes a turn to decide what card I should play next in the same mono-red deck I've been playing since Amokhet? But what about when I only have one mana and need to decide if I should drop my Fanatical Firebrand or my Githu Lavarunner? That takes at least 4 minutes because I need to write out on paper the pros and cons of each and then flip a coin to get a best-of-7 result.
I would argue Magic is a ALOT like chess.....except it has tens of thousands of pieces that all do different things as opposed to only 6. If you dont think each game of magic has its own challenges and strategies then I dont know what to tell you. Its called finding the correct line in any given situation.
Regarding "play-to-win", if you want to play "competitive" magic then yes, you have to invest in the cards to be competitive. If you dont want to, then just play draft. Arena may be a casual forum but the decks being played are more often than not of a competitive nature.
No deck is going to have a good matchup against everything. Thats not how Magic works
Holy ***** dude not even close. You don't draw your pieces in chess and need to rely on RNG giving you your Bishop when you need it. Your opponent cant be playing a board that directly counters your board. Chess is equal and balanced on both sides, the only exception being someone plays first. Not anywhere near a comparison to MTG.
I also feel like there may be too many, and in that massive swarm of walkers there's some that seem way to powerful. Nissa that Shakes the World for example is absolutely insane and almost impossible to deal with once it's out if you're not playing a control deck that has PW removal spells. If you're playing any midrange, aggro, or creature deck her hitting the board is usually game over. The problem with having so many is now you can drain your opponents removal spells on your second rate walkers and then drop your gamewinners unchallenged. I feel like the inclusion of so many PWs is Wizards attempt at speeding up the game. I know that's been a direction they've been heading in for several releases now - they want to get games into the 5-10 minute range and away from the 45 minute slogs in order to attract all those new players who may go Arena first and then enter the card game from that. So if you create a ***** ton of walkers that's one way to end the more controly games early - keep dropping your walkers and if one lives for two turns you won.
Never happens though. Yoinked? By the time I get her out, and she doubles my mana, next turn I can drop something massive, or mass manipulate two PWs. The doubling of mana really solidifies her place
Yeah, hard removal is the only way to stop her, but for whatever it's worth in my games that's not super frequent. If it's against control you can usually bait one out with a Vivian or Ugin first, then Nissa next turn seems to stick. They pretty much have to have the removal in hand when she hits, even if they can nuke her before she ults they cant handle her AND the board and dont last too much longer. This is all assuming she out quick enough. If the game has dragged on too long and they have the mana then they can deal with both, hence why getting her out fast is priority.
The new event is so horribly boring. The games take forever. It's entirely RNG based. It's just an awful slog where you need to race through 80 cards looking for a Liliana.
Awful. Mono-red or spam Walkers. I think I'm done until the next release. War of the Spark is bad folks. It's made the game worse.
Not to mention you need a creature who can reach a walker. All the powerful walkers have a first turn defense - Teferi, Ili, Bolas, Vivians. Turn 1, and for many their +1 is defense. When the new Ili walker drops you have TWO turns to destroy it before it;s game over and shes going to either drop a 2/2 defender turn one or kill two of your creatures. Vivian takes your flier. If your opponent drops one and then the other in two turns its GG. There's no play around for a lot of them other than have a PW removal spell in hand, but PW are going to outnumber your removal spells. What do you run 4 Vraska Contempt? Maybe 4 Bedevil? 4 Vivian A, 4 Vivian B, 4 Ili. The only way the game is playable is because you get Thought Erasure on your first three turns so you can kill them in hand before they drop. I dont like cards that are "press X to win the game" and a lot of the walkers are realllllllly close to that.
5-cmc that they can drop on turn 3 thanks to ramp. Green spells are undercosted because they dont take into consideration the fact that they are pumping out mana sources 2-to-1 or 3-to-1
Holy ***** dude not even close. You don't draw your pieces in chess and need to rely on RNG giving you your Bishop when you need it. Your opponent cant be playing a board that directly counters your board. Chess is equal and balanced on both sides, the only exception being someone plays first. Not anywhere near a comparison to MTG.