fucking ouchOriginally Posted by Saiga
I had two 7-win Sealed runs in Arena, one of them heavily involved that card (the other involved the other scourge of the format, Dream Trawler)
fucking ouch
I had two 7-win Sealed runs in Arena, one of them heavily involved that card (the other involved the other scourge of the format, Dream Trawler)
don't quote me on this
It seems someone in R&D joked about MtG jumping the shark, and the team ran away with the idea:
https://scryfall.com/card/c20/14/shabraz-the-skyshark
https://scryfall.com/card/iko/64/pouncing-shoreshark
https://scryfall.com/card/iko/70/voracious-greatshark
https://scryfall.com/card/iko/67/shark-typhoon
Also, Toho promos (including a spectacularly unfortunately named one), and possibly the messiest (rules-wise) mechanic ever
don't quote me on this
Shark Typhoon is great. I don't know how I feel about all of the references - the Toho promos are a bit ehhhh to me - but I do really like that reference.
The commander decks are looking sweet, though. I'd like to do another precon commander game on Cockatrice when they come out, the last time we did that was pretty fun.
Once again blue gets all the cool toys :/
shit BL says
Once and always and nevermore.
Well, those are picked out of context, I think this set had really cool things of every colour.
That said, holy fucking shit, stop printing blue flash creatures with value and especially ETB counterspells. It's absolutely unfun to play against a deck that does not give up anything to keep counterspells open.
This set is the most excited I've been in a while. So many cool designs and outright batshit insane mechanics. Extreme step up from Eldraine and Theros which had very few if any cool designs (think the only Woah design in Theros were the Titans).
[04:55] Lianru: i3uster is actuallly quite cute
I was mainly joking about the flying sharks, but Flash monsters who also get spell-like ETBs are definitely no joke.
At least monsters are something you can interact with!
shit BL says
Once and always and nevermore.
I liked Eldraine a lot, love the better designed Adventure cards (those where you don't feel bad for not casting the Adventure half), love how it feels like there's 15 Limited archetypes (with the mono colors), its main issue was it was super overtuned for Constructed.
Theros was kinda meh to me, although I like Escape a lot. Limited felt less balanced/more samey, bombs were absurd.
Ikoria, until I actually get to play I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, in theory it seems like a slowish value train Limited format, with sensible to mediocre 1-2 drops (best ones being mana dorks and premium Mutate fodder), and plentiful, if not very efficient removal. Red in particular seems more midrangey and less aggro this time.
I agree on the batshit insane mechanics part, although I have already joined the "Companion was a mistake" camp (basically, it's hard to balance; if any Companion card becomes widely played, it creates a big repetitive gameplay problem, and crushes deck diversity with its deckbuilding limitations)
(note that I mainly judge expansions for how they play in Limited)
BTW,
- Ikoria releases today on MTGO/Arena
- Human drafting also releases today on Arena with Bo1 and Bo3 flavors, also apparently the first human draft is free for everyone, get it while it's hot
Last edited by aldeayeah; April 16th, 2020 at 04:03 AM.
don't quote me on this
I don't really care for limited except to make money on Arena so I can't evaluate it based on that. The powerlevel I don't even count as design failure, usually that's just intentional pushing going a bit too far. The problem is most cards that ended up being major players were boring post bans. Oko was actually a cool design for example, just way overtuned. In the end what's left are cards like Lovestruck Beast/Brazen Borrower/Questing Beast and the like which just aren't very flashy all things considered. There were some cool decks that came out of it and Fires of Invention remains one of the most fun cards to play with, but all in all its not a set that gives me a "woah" feeling looking back on it (as said except for Fires which was awesome)
[04:55] Lianru: i3uster is actuallly quite cute
Mutate rulings make it far better than I thought it was. Blinks return the entire pile seperately to the battlefield, bounces bounce every card in the pile. Seems like you can only get 2-for-1'd on reactive bounces instead of regular bounces.
[04:55] Lianru: i3uster is actuallly quite cute
If you only play the mutate creatures that generate value when they mutate, you can't really get 2-for-1'd, most of the blue/green/black ones fall in that camp.
I'm not sure many of them will see play in competitive Constructed because they're all super expensive, the high end in current Standard is ridiculously strong, and requiring another creature to mutate on is a big call.
The octopus with flash and curiosity is one that could see play, but still is kinda clunky compared to say Curious Obsession.
Mutatos are really fun in Limited though, I lived the UG dream in my first draft game with a Glimmerbell-Parcelbeast-Trumpeting Gnarr-Dreamtail Heron-Archipelagore mutato, couldn't get past four wins though.
The Limited BGx reanimate deck is also super fun, built something close to it in my first Sealed, got to six wins.
* * *
As for Eldraine things I liked in Constructed, I always have a blast playing the Adventure decks with the Innkeeper and the Clover. I've played BG, RG, Temur, even BR Adventure Knights in the last few months, they were all fun to play. And the Jund Cat Oven deck was kinda obnoxious, but I absolutely love the low to the ground BR version. Fires it fun, but man it feels so cheap!
don't quote me on this
Dimir flash looks so sick, once again having fun with combos in the upper tiers is illegal (cavalier fires honorable mention)
[04:55] Lianru: i3uster is actuallly quite cute
Yeah it's bizarre to me, because it feels like companion was patterned after Baku/Genn (mostly due to the odd/even companions which were the deckbuilding restrictions for Baku/Genn) from Hearthstone. But if they did use that as inspiration, they should have realized that Baku/Genn completely fucked up standard partly due to how providing a guaranteed, powerful effect and partly due to constraining deck building so there was much less variety in the meta.
Now, the companion cards don't have a 'start of game' effect, but being an extra, guaranteed card in your hand is pretty close - and they have the exact kind of deck-building restriction that could be a real problem.
Anywho, everyone log-on to arena in the next 2 weeks to make sure you don't miss out on your free draft token.
I've done two drafts already, the first a traditional draft - the Bo3 player draft, and the second premier draft - Bo1 player draft. The reward structure for Traditional is deliberately VERY feast or famine, with you playing 3 games total and losing a lot of value on 0-1 wins (in fact, both are just 1 pack prize, so winning once does nothing) and getting serious value out of 2 or 3 wins. I think this structure was done to deliberately push people toward Bo1 more, where the structure is much more forgiving (play until 7 wins or 3 losses, prizes are more incremental).
I went 0-2 on my traditional draft, because it was free so I just went "fuck it" and raredrafted. I got both Genesis Ultimatum and Song of Creation, as well two companions (Umori and Yorion) as well as Gemrazer and a pile of mutate cards. So I played a total meme Temur pile, and very nearly won my first match - game 1 I narrowly won (was one turn off decking due to Song of Creation) and game 3 I very nearly won, but just got killed by wide fliers. Then I lost to Sharknado and a perfect sequence of answers to shut down my alpha swing. Favourite moment was game 1, freeing 3 of my creatures under Capture Sphere & splitting my mutate piles all in one go by blinking them with Yorion so I could go wide for the win.
Meanwhile, my premier draft is 3-0 currently as I'm just playing a White/Black mix of mutate creatures and removal. Nothing more satisfying than mutating a Chittering Harvester onto a Dirge Bat to get rid of two of my opponents' creatures that were threatening lethal, and stabilizing after that.
Dunno man, cat oven, lucky clover, reclamation and red dudes+excalibur all are kinda combos
When everything is combo nothing is combo I guess
What I mean is, every top deck has some sort of busted synergy engine, except arguably UW control and non-reclamation Flash which are goodstuff, some of the ramp decks fall into this camp too. Bant in particular is an unholy abomination and an affront to everything that is pure in the world.
Last edited by aldeayeah; April 17th, 2020 at 06:55 PM.
don't quote me on this
Just lost a Sealed game with an insane deck (UG with King Kong, Parcelbeast, flying snake, UG human mythic, 4 of the trample synergy creatures, good removal, good card draw, good counterspells, decent curve...) in which all of my bombs where answered (most memorably King Kong with the +1/+3 trick, that was literally the only card that could do it), followed by my opponent playing that creature that gets a random ability every turn and lucksacking Hexproof on the first try. Oh well.
bad beats story nothing to see here
Last edited by aldeayeah; April 18th, 2020 at 04:50 PM.
don't quote me on this
As someone who mostly plays Legacy, merely hearing the name of that set gives me a fit.
The world would be a much better place if we all just pretended the cards released in 2019 never existed.
Eldraine was a very cool set thematically and has some fun cards for constructed, however I think adventure as a mechanic has waaay too much value.
WAR was a terrible fucking set though. Urghh.
This entire set is like they gave Rosewater a mad libs book and a bottle of whiskey and used that book to decide the set
At least you can counter/discard them and actually get rid of them - compare to Flashback.
But the supporting cast for Adventure in Standard is pretty strong. The fact that the adventure deck loses nothing but lands in the next rotation is a bit concerning.
The white can-only-cast-from-hand hatebear may end up working overtime.
- - - Updated - - -
God I hate that Limited format.
- - - Updated - - -
Same here but Modern. Modern Horizons was the set that made me quit collecting Constructed staples.
don't quote me on this
Yeah, after the mess that was 2019 and the disaster that Ikoria has already proven to be I essentially decided to make Pauper my main format. It is eternal, fun, relatively balanced, has Quirion Ranger and Brainstorm (two of my favorite cards), has no planeswalkers (hate those things) and is mostly protected from Wizard's awful new design philosophy (even though some 2019 cards - such as the now-banned Arcum's Astrolabe - still managed to cause quite a bit of damage). I will keep my Legacy collection, but have decided to abandon the format until things get better - IF they get better.
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