Although there will always some people who take issue with a change, Wizards doesn't have a great history of explaining their B&R updates either. In this case the original Modern list was justified by "play safe now and unban later after more is known." Which is perfectly reasonable. So, having observed a completely lack of control in the meta, many were ready for a token easing like Ancestral Vision. And then not only did that not happen, there was no hint of consideration.
Lauer should have added a paragraph explaining why this turn 3 format can't handle a card that resolves on turn 5 at this time, or why banning a bunch of 1cc is good but unbanning a card that counters 1cc is bad. Not difficult to do, but it didn't happen and I don't have tremendous sympathy for people who handle their PR so badly. Instead a common feeling now is that 6 more cards will be banned in 3 months, and 6 more after that. And the problem with that isn't that a restricted format can't be fun, but rather that people purchasing cards want stability, and people who already own want to play them.
I don't think this article is written any worse than any of the other dreck I
see on this website. Having said that, I agree that Wizards could have done much
better than they did. Most of the cards gave me the impression that they just
mailed it in with zero effort.
I, too, have met some of the "brains" at WOTC and they don't impress me at all.
Of course, the knee-jerk response to that statement is, "who are you to criticize Wizards?"
Blah, blah, blah...
Easy answer: I'm a customer and have been since 1995. Even when the formats were warped
by stupid cards and the sets were awful, I stayed on. The game survives and thrives
because of the players and not Wizards. If anything, it thrives in spite of Wizards.
Innistrad is an attempt to "dial down" the power creep that's been happening for years
and it's going to take some getting used to.
I appreciate you are going for some sort of comedic aside with the invisible stalker dialogue section, but it comes off as childish, particularly the bits about blue. While I actually agree shroud is more fitting than hexproof, they made the decision to print only hexproof in this set and M12 for whatever reason, probably simplicity and flavor. Invisible Stalker isn't even as good as Troll Ascetic, and that card saw limited constructed play.
The Man-Eating Tree type design was very good, albeit blurry. I would personally have loved to see more of it.
Apparently it's CC 0 according to the Innistrad FAQ
Originally Posted by Innistrad FAQ
"711.2b While a double-faced permanent's back face is up, it has only the characteristics of its back face. The back face doesn't have a mana cost; it has the colors in its color indicator (see rule 202.2e)."
As for GSZ, there is this rule
"711.2a In every zone other than the battlefield, and also on the battlefield with its front face up, a double-faced card has only the characteristics of its front face."
In other words you can't search for the back face of card, because none of those characteristics exist in that zone. If you birthing pod it into play, you also can't transform it
"711.3. Except for determining whether or not a permanent can transform, a spell, ability, or rule that needs information about a double-faced permanent sees only the information given by the face that's currently up.
Example: A Clone enters the battlefield as a copy of Wildblood Pack (the back face of a double-faced card). Clone will be a copy of Wildblood Pack. Because Clone is itself not a double-faced card, it can't transform."
Thanks for the compliments guys. Yeah, the Momir deck certainly could have gone off a turn earlier. Of course, he made a conscious decision not to do so, and ended up paying the price. I think he's not going to make the same mistake again.
I don't think I emphasized enough in the article just how good Fallen Ideal was in the deck. I threw it in on a lark, but it ended up being one of the most impressive cards in the deck when Endrek was out. It allowed for Commander kills, as well as huge beatings out of nowhere. And you could put it on any creature. It was pretty much the all-star of the deck.
As for a mono-Blue budget deck, I have an idea in mind but I don't think it will be nearly as cheap as the 20 tickets I usually stick to. I will see what I can do though. In the meantime you can work off of my old Sakashima list if you want:
There are a couple of pricey cards on the list, like the Swords, Venser, Kira, Disk, Time Spiral and Bribery (16 tickets!?!?! Holy Cow!) but it's the basis for a fun deck that isn't overly powerful. And you cand take out a bunch of those cards for new stuff that has been printed in the last year, like Blue Sun's Zenith or Consecrated Sphinx or whatever. But like I said, I will try to build something new here within the next 3 articles or so (working on something else for the next one already).
I can live with the bannings even if I only agree with about half of them for Modern. What I can't agree with is the time they are taking to reprint certain essential cards, namely Goyf and the lesser run shocklands from Guildpact and Dissension.
The lands are at least coming down a bit in price, but the cost of Goyf, the single most played creature in the format, is distressing. It is causing the metagame to warp due to his price, similar to how legacy online is warped due to Force of Will. All of the aggressive disruptive decks like Doran, NLU, UG Faeries, Bant and Zoo variants require him, and there is no substitute. A playset for Goyf will run you around 300, down from 350, but that's just not a reasonable price for this type of format.
It doesn't matter where he gets reprinted, be it duel decks, commander or even standard, but until he does we can't have an accurate picture of the metagame.
I question about that. When a card is flipped over, is it's converted mana cost 0 or the initial casting cost? And how would this work with Green Sun's Zenith or Birthing Pod?
While I appreciate the author's knowledge and appreciation of Literature (an underrated appreciation in my opinion), most of that is going to be lost on your "average" MTG player. While most of us are into sci-fi/fantasy, I think the strict definition of "gothic" is going to differ from person to person and this set does a great job of capturing a somewhat overgeneralized version of what that is. As far as using Poe or anything like that for flavor text; early on they did use quotes from famous authors. Not sure if they still do, but you have to consider branding. This is THEIR product, and they have to push the world and characters as much as possible. Even if it is on something seemingly subtle as flavor text. It has to do with creating a personal experience between the world of "Dominaria", "Mirrodin", "Phyrexia" etc that relates to the card game...
Your criticism of flavor way have some merit in the eyes of a "purist gothic", your card design criticism is where your lack of actual game design experience really shows. Errata-ing mana costs is a recipe for disaster and anyone who has taken any type of design course would never consider this as an option.
I think this article would be better received as an op-ed piece rather than one of design.
They had it in, but had to replace it because they needed a 1B Zombie for limited.
And they never errata printed casting costs. That would lead to an absolute mess of a game. If Headless Horseman, how about Stoneforge Mystic, or Jace, or Batterskull, or Ancestral Recall? It would be a mess. See Aaron Forsythe's comment here:
One big jump in price that didn't make you Standard list was Ratchet Bomb. It jumped from $0.80 to $2.00 in a week. I think everyone is looking at the new standard and sees how this will shut down token decks, transformed werewolves (or any other double faced card), many of the aggro decks, and is great enchantment and artifact removal for the colors that don't have access to them. Plus you can now use it twice with Buried Ruin.
The only banning that really surprised me was that Cloudpost was gone instead of Vesuva. I agree that having 8 functional Cloudposts (in addition to 4 Glimmerposts) in a deck is incredible, but 4 Cloudposts in a deck doesn't seem that great.
You wound up making a game fun that I probably would have just been frustrated with. The four players were your fun budget deck, a huge power combo deck, a deck thrown together with extra cards from a draft, and a deck that had mana problems. That means they probably ranged in power from 9 (out of 10) down to 2 or 3. Not the best mix for a fun game.
Or just someone upset that their idea of gothic and card design is WAY OFF of most other peoples? I stopped reading after the oversized, butchered Man-Eating tree scenario... not to be too critical, but this sucked.
Stroking Moma was one of the most fun decks to tweak and unfun to play against. And yeah I laughed out loud when I read the banned list. I was a little disappointed in GSZ being taken out even as I understood the reason for it but otherwise I think this is a great thing.
The Modern format is far from dead and now there is more room for the creative minds amongst us to find new ways to break old cards.
I was a little taken aback by the usage of orientated when I expected the more common oriented but apparently either suffices.
This would be far better if it didn't feel like a long rant. I realize that for you, Innistrad represents some kind of betrayal of your Vorthos sensibilities but I doubt very much the average magic player feels similarly. And comparing the set to homelands in any way shape or form is just... *Sigh.*
Well Homelands DID try to gain the Gothic feel that you claim is lacking in Innistrad. So there is that.
Yes there are points I agree with here. (Nevermore was a gaff for sure.) But overall I am feeling rather underwhelmed by your critique. The set is exciting and interesting to me even with the flaws you point out.
If you really wanted to talk about top down design (and how not to do it) why not show some original examples (using Magic Set Editor or its ilk)? I, for one, would have preferred to see that.
I do agree with you the art is outstanding. I didn't universally love Mirage's art so I would say the art here may be much better. (I need to see the cards more and absorb the flavor of the art before I decide.)
combo winter, such fun. I mean broken, stupid fun, but fun still. Perhaps I'm just an old dog reminiscing about the golden days of magic but what a time that was! yes, noobies, bannings haven't been very frequent, but it's not the end of the world, life goes on. We should be grateful that WotC is actually keeping an eye on all the degenerate interactions since they are approaching the 15,000 card mark.
This article is full of crap. "but no one in the flavor department bothered to learn what gothic means" you're apparently in the minority in your opinion.
You've also cited no design qualifications for yourself. You put your only good point, about flavor text, at the beginning and then it's all garbage from there. Even the Flavor text on Nevermore isn't bad, it's pretty good, it just isn't what you want. Seriously, complaining that a DND spell was butchered by Invisible Stalker? Guess what, the idea of an Invisible Stalker isn't exclusive to DND and Invisible Man is a boring name. Red failed because it didn't have a seductress demon (which wouldn't be red in the first place)? Red has demonic stuff that is affiliated with HELLFIRE, you know, something red. Headless Hroseman should be erratad to lower the casting cost? You're on crack, they've never power-level erratad a casting cost in the history of Magic and never will (except in the odd case of a printing error in Alpha).
Everybody is an armchair designer these days, it seems. Man I should write crap articles for free tickets. It seems pretty easy.
No you thought wrong; your absence was felt and yes, it's good to see you back writing. This site needs a good Commander writer (a regular one) and you should definitely make time for writing.
I dont think anyone is trying to kill legacy or anything as some might state. Aaron Forsythe did an interview recently explaining that due to the fact that apparently Wotc hands are tied as far as the reserve list goes they understand that legacy can only grow to X people playing the format before its full. This is due to a limited number of the bigger cards in the format (duals and FoW). So they created another modern format that allowed reprints so people could continue playing with cards they owned. I fail to see how any of that signals a death knell for legacy. Maybe online where supplies arent as limited as paper its tougher to understand this concept, but there are only so many duals in existence. Only so many people can play legacy at any given time. With Modern they admitted that yes they wanted an easier to moderate eternal format where if card deand began exponentially exceeding supply they could rectify the situation. Certainly seems like a far better business plan than supporting formats that really have no sound way of bringing in revenue due to the majority of the staples being available only on the secondary market.
Although there will always some people who take issue with a change, Wizards doesn't have a great history of explaining their B&R updates either. In this case the original Modern list was justified by "play safe now and unban later after more is known." Which is perfectly reasonable. So, having observed a completely lack of control in the meta, many were ready for a token easing like Ancestral Vision. And then not only did that not happen, there was no hint of consideration.
Lauer should have added a paragraph explaining why this turn 3 format can't handle a card that resolves on turn 5 at this time, or why banning a bunch of 1cc is good but unbanning a card that counters 1cc is bad. Not difficult to do, but it didn't happen and I don't have tremendous sympathy for people who handle their PR so badly. Instead a common feeling now is that 6 more cards will be banned in 3 months, and 6 more after that. And the problem with that isn't that a restricted format can't be fun, but rather that people purchasing cards want stability, and people who already own want to play them.
I thought he did on the 20th....
Like the Teferi Idea.
EDIT: Nope, guess he didn't...
I don't think this article is written any worse than any of the other dreck I
see on this website. Having said that, I agree that Wizards could have done much
better than they did. Most of the cards gave me the impression that they just
mailed it in with zero effort.
I, too, have met some of the "brains" at WOTC and they don't impress me at all.
Of course, the knee-jerk response to that statement is, "who are you to criticize Wizards?"
Blah, blah, blah...
Easy answer: I'm a customer and have been since 1995. Even when the formats were warped
by stupid cards and the sets were awful, I stayed on. The game survives and thrives
because of the players and not Wizards. If anything, it thrives in spite of Wizards.
Innistrad is an attempt to "dial down" the power creep that's been happening for years
and it's going to take some getting used to.
The other "strong" blue generals include Azami, Thada Adel, Erayo (eww, don't do that, but if you want to I guess...), and Teferi.
Regardless of how poorly it was written or argued, it's a fair point to be taken that Troll Ascetic wasn't *unblockable*
Nice to see another article. If all goes well, I should be back soon myself.
I appreciate you are going for some sort of comedic aside with the invisible stalker dialogue section, but it comes off as childish, particularly the bits about blue. While I actually agree shroud is more fitting than hexproof, they made the decision to print only hexproof in this set and M12 for whatever reason, probably simplicity and flavor. Invisible Stalker isn't even as good as Troll Ascetic, and that card saw limited constructed play.
The Man-Eating Tree type design was very good, albeit blurry. I would personally have loved to see more of it.
Apparently it's CC 0 according to the Innistrad FAQ
Originally Posted by Innistrad FAQ
"711.2b While a double-faced permanent's back face is up, it has only the characteristics of its back face. The back face doesn't have a mana cost; it has the colors in its color indicator (see rule 202.2e)."
As for GSZ, there is this rule
"711.2a In every zone other than the battlefield, and also on the battlefield with its front face up, a double-faced card has only the characteristics of its front face."
In other words you can't search for the back face of card, because none of those characteristics exist in that zone. If you birthing pod it into play, you also can't transform it
"711.3. Except for determining whether or not a permanent can transform, a spell, ability, or rule that needs information about a double-faced permanent sees only the information given by the face that's currently up.
Example: A Clone enters the battlefield as a copy of Wildblood Pack (the back face of a double-faced card). Clone will be a copy of Wildblood Pack. Because Clone is itself not a double-faced card, it can't transform."
Welcome back! :-)
Thanks for the compliments guys. Yeah, the Momir deck certainly could have gone off a turn earlier. Of course, he made a conscious decision not to do so, and ended up paying the price. I think he's not going to make the same mistake again.
I don't think I emphasized enough in the article just how good Fallen Ideal was in the deck. I threw it in on a lark, but it ended up being one of the most impressive cards in the deck when Endrek was out. It allowed for Commander kills, as well as huge beatings out of nowhere. And you could put it on any creature. It was pretty much the all-star of the deck.
As for a mono-Blue budget deck, I have an idea in mind but I don't think it will be nearly as cheap as the 20 tickets I usually stick to. I will see what I can do though. In the meantime you can work off of my old Sakashima list if you want:
http://puremtgo.com/articles/conquerer-commander-vol-vi-sakashima-imposter
There are a couple of pricey cards on the list, like the Swords, Venser, Kira, Disk, Time Spiral and Bribery (16 tickets!?!?! Holy Cow!) but it's the basis for a fun deck that isn't overly powerful. And you cand take out a bunch of those cards for new stuff that has been printed in the last year, like Blue Sun's Zenith or Consecrated Sphinx or whatever. But like I said, I will try to build something new here within the next 3 articles or so (working on something else for the next one already).
I can live with the bannings even if I only agree with about half of them for Modern. What I can't agree with is the time they are taking to reprint certain essential cards, namely Goyf and the lesser run shocklands from Guildpact and Dissension.
The lands are at least coming down a bit in price, but the cost of Goyf, the single most played creature in the format, is distressing. It is causing the metagame to warp due to his price, similar to how legacy online is warped due to Force of Will. All of the aggressive disruptive decks like Doran, NLU, UG Faeries, Bant and Zoo variants require him, and there is no substitute. A playset for Goyf will run you around 300, down from 350, but that's just not a reasonable price for this type of format.
It doesn't matter where he gets reprinted, be it duel decks, commander or even standard, but until he does we can't have an accurate picture of the metagame.
I question about that. When a card is flipped over, is it's converted mana cost 0 or the initial casting cost? And how would this work with Green Sun's Zenith or Birthing Pod?
but I agree.
While I appreciate the author's knowledge and appreciation of Literature (an underrated appreciation in my opinion), most of that is going to be lost on your "average" MTG player. While most of us are into sci-fi/fantasy, I think the strict definition of "gothic" is going to differ from person to person and this set does a great job of capturing a somewhat overgeneralized version of what that is. As far as using Poe or anything like that for flavor text; early on they did use quotes from famous authors. Not sure if they still do, but you have to consider branding. This is THEIR product, and they have to push the world and characters as much as possible. Even if it is on something seemingly subtle as flavor text. It has to do with creating a personal experience between the world of "Dominaria", "Mirrodin", "Phyrexia" etc that relates to the card game...
Your criticism of flavor way have some merit in the eyes of a "purist gothic", your card design criticism is where your lack of actual game design experience really shows. Errata-ing mana costs is a recipe for disaster and anyone who has taken any type of design course would never consider this as an option.
I think this article would be better received as an op-ed piece rather than one of design.
Nice plays that edged the "broken deck" out of the game.
Of course he could have gone off earlier...
I like to play blue and want to build a deck that is not Vendilion Clique (my natural "spike" inclin). Care to do one about a mono blue budget deck?
Thanks.
Mark Rosewater addressed the Headless Horseman issue here:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/161
They had it in, but had to replace it because they needed a 1B Zombie for limited.
And they never errata printed casting costs. That would lead to an absolute mess of a game. If Headless Horseman, how about Stoneforge Mystic, or Jace, or Batterskull, or Ancestral Recall? It would be a mess. See Aaron Forsythe's comment here:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=16440
One big jump in price that didn't make you Standard list was Ratchet Bomb. It jumped from $0.80 to $2.00 in a week. I think everyone is looking at the new standard and sees how this will shut down token decks, transformed werewolves (or any other double faced card), many of the aggro decks, and is great enchantment and artifact removal for the colors that don't have access to them. Plus you can now use it twice with Buried Ruin.
The only banning that really surprised me was that Cloudpost was gone instead of Vesuva. I agree that having 8 functional Cloudposts (in addition to 4 Glimmerposts) in a deck is incredible, but 4 Cloudposts in a deck doesn't seem that great.
Great read as always. It's good to see you back.
You wound up making a game fun that I probably would have just been frustrated with. The four players were your fun budget deck, a huge power combo deck, a deck thrown together with extra cards from a draft, and a deck that had mana problems. That means they probably ranged in power from 9 (out of 10) down to 2 or 3. Not the best mix for a fun game.
Or just someone upset that their idea of gothic and card design is WAY OFF of most other peoples? I stopped reading after the oversized, butchered Man-Eating tree scenario... not to be too critical, but this sucked.
Try again
Stroking Moma was one of the most fun decks to tweak and unfun to play against. And yeah I laughed out loud when I read the banned list. I was a little disappointed in GSZ being taken out even as I understood the reason for it but otherwise I think this is a great thing.
The Modern format is far from dead and now there is more room for the creative minds amongst us to find new ways to break old cards.
I was a little taken aback by the usage of orientated when I expected the more common oriented but apparently either suffices.
This would be far better if it didn't feel like a long rant. I realize that for you, Innistrad represents some kind of betrayal of your Vorthos sensibilities but I doubt very much the average magic player feels similarly. And comparing the set to homelands in any way shape or form is just... *Sigh.*
Well Homelands DID try to gain the Gothic feel that you claim is lacking in Innistrad. So there is that.
Yes there are points I agree with here. (Nevermore was a gaff for sure.) But overall I am feeling rather underwhelmed by your critique. The set is exciting and interesting to me even with the flaws you point out.
If you really wanted to talk about top down design (and how not to do it) why not show some original examples (using Magic Set Editor or its ilk)? I, for one, would have preferred to see that.
I do agree with you the art is outstanding. I didn't universally love Mirage's art so I would say the art here may be much better. (I need to see the cards more and absorb the flavor of the art before I decide.)
combo winter, such fun. I mean broken, stupid fun, but fun still. Perhaps I'm just an old dog reminiscing about the golden days of magic but what a time that was! yes, noobies, bannings haven't been very frequent, but it's not the end of the world, life goes on. We should be grateful that WotC is actually keeping an eye on all the degenerate interactions since they are approaching the 15,000 card mark.
This article is full of crap. "but no one in the flavor department bothered to learn what gothic means" you're apparently in the minority in your opinion.
You've also cited no design qualifications for yourself. You put your only good point, about flavor text, at the beginning and then it's all garbage from there. Even the Flavor text on Nevermore isn't bad, it's pretty good, it just isn't what you want. Seriously, complaining that a DND spell was butchered by Invisible Stalker? Guess what, the idea of an Invisible Stalker isn't exclusive to DND and Invisible Man is a boring name. Red failed because it didn't have a seductress demon (which wouldn't be red in the first place)? Red has demonic stuff that is affiliated with HELLFIRE, you know, something red. Headless Hroseman should be erratad to lower the casting cost? You're on crack, they've never power-level erratad a casting cost in the history of Magic and never will (except in the odd case of a printing error in Alpha).
Everybody is an armchair designer these days, it seems. Man I should write crap articles for free tickets. It seems pretty easy.
you did leave out the red and black vampires both of which are plentiful. The red vampires are actually better than the black ones in this set...
No you thought wrong; your absence was felt and yes, it's good to see you back writing. This site needs a good Commander writer (a regular one) and you should definitely make time for writing.
Good to have you back. And black tokens are fun!
LE
I dont think anyone is trying to kill legacy or anything as some might state. Aaron Forsythe did an interview recently explaining that due to the fact that apparently Wotc hands are tied as far as the reserve list goes they understand that legacy can only grow to X people playing the format before its full. This is due to a limited number of the bigger cards in the format (duals and FoW). So they created another modern format that allowed reprints so people could continue playing with cards they owned. I fail to see how any of that signals a death knell for legacy. Maybe online where supplies arent as limited as paper its tougher to understand this concept, but there are only so many duals in existence. Only so many people can play legacy at any given time. With Modern they admitted that yes they wanted an easier to moderate eternal format where if card deand began exponentially exceeding supply they could rectify the situation. Certainly seems like a far better business plan than supporting formats that really have no sound way of bringing in revenue due to the majority of the staples being available only on the secondary market.