Copy enchantment seems fun, but rether wouldn't touch it. It'd have to be hardcast and the enchantment its copying already in play. I usually don't have a problem with the coronets, they work fine, especially with the unstable mutations. I tried out the riftwings, but prefer the flying men. The auratouched mage got cut right away, and i'm trying akroma, angel of wrath and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. I'm also looking at blazing archon and followed footsteps. The mana base I tweaked... I cut an adarkar waste, 2 terramorphics, 1 plain, 1 island, 1 new benalia, and 1 tolaria west, to add 4 flagstones of trokair and 4 hallowed fountain. The rest of the deck is minus the mage and plus 2 grand arbiters and a followed footsteps, which gets fun fast, but a little to slow for my tastes. More testing will tell. Any more ideas anyone? A fun, and usually, budget deck, try it! Thanks again Lythand, was definately on the back burner 'til this..
The Retether are still missing in the decklist above...
What about Copy Enchantment? You could cut of the 4-ofs to be more flexible by using the CE. It even triggers comes into play, so will get the 4 life from Fetters or draw the card from Plax.
When i wrote the article, I had this deck list. I tested it a few times and then submitted it to a fellow clan mate for editting. However that clan mate had been busy and never got to me. I did some cahnges to the deck and more testing. My inexperiences in article writing, forgot to change the original deck list. Here is the updated.
4 Compulsive Research 4 Faith's Fetters 3 Infiltrator's Magemark 10 Island 10 Plains 4 Spirit Link 4 Auramancer's Guise 2 Azorius Signet 4 Looter il-Kor 4 Magus of the Bazaar 4 Retether 4 Riftwing Cloudskate 3 Shielding Plax
Sideboard 4 Mana Leak 3 Repeal 4 Worship 4 Magus of the Jar
I have always been a skeptical one on running 1 ofs. I may try it though. See how it performs. A few of them though are needed as four offs. Auramancers Guise and Spirit link are the main ones. Riftwing and the Faiths fetters are there for dealing with spot annoyances. And yes there are some changes like dual lands that could be added. But I was working this with a bidget. Fianlly, I did test the deck with Daybreak coranet. Problem is, when you cast retether, and if you have no enchantsments out on any creatures yet, it will stay in the Graveyard for lack of legal target.
One of my favourite fun decks to play at the moment is Zur, with planty of enchantments including the magemarks, once he's out it becomes real fun chosing just which encjhantment to grab for maximum effect, not winning effect, but fun effect. I just put in a retether when I drew one, but unlike you seck I don't get enough enchantments into the GY to be much use. I'll give yours a go and let you know how it plays out. Thanks, good article.
I just gotta sugest daybreak coronet, I think it could easily replace the flickerform. I don't know about you, but in my testing I tried flickerform and never once used it, got cut after only a few games. Maybe even replace the spirit link, but not sure. I also ran flying men over riftwing, and unstable mutations over gigadrowse, reading your article it doesn't sound like it did too good, love 'em in mine. Shielding plax is a good idea, didn't think of it in mine. I love looter il-kor, he's in half my blue decks. Land base could definately be tweaked, but its probably all to do with budget, not that expensive of a deck. Don't know why you run so much white mana though, I understand you need it for retether, and occasionally ther other auras, but nowhere as much. I remember when urzas block was around, by far the most powerful block to see print. A really good article though, thanks.
-plax is against removal
-if you run 1 of them, you have less of a chance of drawing them, (and then discarding and retethering them)
-three deams has the potential to be good, but seems to expensive for me (mana wise)
my decklist-
creatures-
flying men x4
looter il-kor x4
magus of bazaar x4
auratouched mage x1 (not too sure about, probably cut)
You could have taken some of the spirits of the old list by adding Three Dreams as an ersatz-Enlightened Tutor and instead of playing a lot of unsorted 2-ofs use a bunch of 1-ofs. This way, up the number of Signets to 4.
To add some structure play 4 of the Research - it's gold!
Last but not least, what is your plan against spot-removal?
Nice to know what's going on inside the judges' minds when rating cards. Also I hope this kind of articles will increase the number of contestants we have so far.
I think normally I would agree with that except for the distinction made between the free cards in TSP and FUT. For example I dont think that you could replicate for free as many copies of wheel of fate as you wanted, wheras you can with pact of the titan.
This is finally what I been waiting on. Feedback. Not only do I get the feedback on how my cards could do better, but how others could of improved as well. It was like a big class on card design. Excellent job. Only critique I have, is that instead of addressing each poster as if you were singling them out, word it as you are addressing a class. There is a lot of you you you, when it would be better worded as " we can learn from this submission....." Other then that I liked it.
I'm not a judge, but I'm pretty sure that Chord/Stir would work with Walkers. CR 203.3a says: "The converted mana cost of an object with no mana cost is 0."
I'm glad you liked Teferi's Nightmare, and I can't argue with disliking the art either. I'm much more of an ideas guy than an art director, and I still tend to have a hangup over using someone elses art off the internet, even with their permission, so tend to only take art which I then modify, or create from scratch. As you can see, my art skills are mediocre at best. :)
I'm pretty pleased with both my entries for the second half. It was a truly excellent restriction to work with, and I'm glad people picked up on the flavor of both cards. Invert Reality does have a good few ways to be abused, but they all take a hefty bit of effort. Still, traumatizing and haunted echoing yourself, using Jhoira, Mind's Desire, manipulate fate, Arc-Slogger, Orcish Librarian or even just lobotomising yourself would be cool.
I only submitted the second half because we did not have permission from the contestants to use submissions from the first half. One of the criticisms of this article idea from the beginning is that some people would not like having their cards judged in a very public place like this. Therefore, only cards whose authors explicitly granted permission for their use made the article.
I think the writing would have been helped by having some opposing points of view presented. Hopefully the comments will help in that respect! :)
I encourage you to spell out anything cool about your entries that you think I might miss when judging the card. However, I am going to judge the card based on what is inside the four borders. If I have to read some other source to figure out why the card does what it does, then there is something wrong with the flavor of the card (exceptions can be made for other cards, ie the July card cycles). Why does Planar Being have protection from all colors? Why is it all colors? You could infer trampling from the art, but it is clearly not flying. Why doesn't it have a CMC? How is it related to the RFG zone? These are questions the card won't answer by itself.
The overall writing isn't bad, however, why does this only cover the 2nd part?
Also.. Planar Beeing isn't a reference to the normal magic-events, reading the short backgroundinformation that I gave in my first post for the 1st part should make that clear. Next time I won't just hint at my precious posting, I'll directlink to it. =/
Also, since this contest had special rules, I made a common and a rare for each part... since the overall rating mattered more, thus creating printable, solid commons and experimental rares that stretch the bounderies as we know them a little. Next Time I build a whole set arround a months theme I guess I will have to make it even more obvious then using the same expansionsymbol. *sigh*
Hmmm...you are quite right Evu, I did not notice the interaction between having one Effervesce in the graveyard and one RFG. That does become a good deal more powerful. I'm still not sure that it's worth a card slot in a deck, but now at least there is a question about it.
It would not be the first time I've missed something about a card. Please, if there is something really cool but subtle about your card, point it out in the forums!
You could justify Walkers as a green creature just using the name and creature type. My thing is, you are less likely to play this in a green deck than any other color. Tying this card to forests or elves somehow would have helped its flavor. Like "If you control an Elf, ~ gains shroud. If you control a forest, ~ gains trample."
I'm not 100% certain that Chord trick works. Chord says that you have to have a converted mana cost of X or less, but Walkers has no converted mana cost, so I'm not sure it's a legal target. A creature with a converted mana cost of 0, yes, but one with no converted mana cost? I think that's the same principal with Stir the Grave - you couldn't reanimate this for B, since there is no CMC on the creature. I'd love a judge's input on that, though. There may not even be a rule in magic addressing the issue, since AFAIK there has never been a creature without a CMC. Well, morphs have no CMC when they are in play, but they do in your hand. Except Zoetic Cavern. But that's not a creature in your hand. So I'm back to my original statement; I don't think there has been a creature with no CMC printed yet.
hk3family, I did give Cryonic Suspension Chamber an extra point in flavor because I think Cryonics is cool. I don't think that effected the overall result much. If you really want me to skew the results, you'll need to make a Cryonic Ninja. Like Sub-Zero. If you could somehow make him a Robot, Pirate, or a Cowboy as well that's all the better.
Thanks for taking the time to write this up, khirareq. It's great to have verbal feedback instead of (well, in addition to) just a bunch of numbers.
HK, you understood Effervesce perfectly. :) One in the grave and one RFGed (and I'm assuming this would be in a block where Delve was a major mechanic) would form a hard-to-disrupt engine that says "W: Gain 1 life". As an instant I think it would be too powerful. As a Sorcery it might be slightly on the weak side, but could find a home in the right kind of deck. This also explains why it's a common: I wanted the combo to be possible in Limited. Though, depending on whether it was in a big or a small set, and whether there were any other cards that used the same mechanic, it might need to go up to uncommon.
I wondered whether I should say something about how it was intended to be used in my submission post, but decided that cards should stand on their own. That might have been a mistake. The card got a very low score for playability, and I think part of the reason is that not all of the judges fully understood it.
As for Walkers Upon the Land, it seems khirareq had about the same thought process I did. I figured that a creature with no mana cost can afford to be a little better than any existing creature with a mana cost, since you can already Zombify any costed creature on turn 4, but you still have the option of playing it fairly. I searched Gatherer for something that would justify the design I wanted to make, and when I came to Simic Sky Swallower, I decided that Walkers was fair.
However, there is a problem with it that I didn't realize until after I submitted it: Chord of Calling. Play any Green creature on turn 1 and you can Chord out the Walkers on turn 2. That doesn't leave your opponent a lot of time to find Wrath of God. Play an Elvish Champion on turn 3 (which is one of the intended uses) and it gets even worse. I wouldn't want those two cards to be in Extended at the same time. But aside from that, I think the card is probably strong without being broken.
I think that the keywords justify it as a Green card. No doubt it would see more play in Black decks, but that's how it goes with reanimation targets. Look at what people are reanimating these days -- the colors are all over the place.
My personal favorite cards from June's Stage 2 were Discarded Hammer and Teferi's Nightmare. The former interprets the rules in a way that's elegant in its simplicity. The latter has great mechanics and flavor -- trade this with another phased-out card; something horrible goes wrong while it's phased out, and look what it comes back as! -- and it doesn't hurt that Phasing is one of my favorite keywords. Not a fan of the artwork, though.
Good to know what you thought on each card, I like the "lesson learned" portion. However, 2 things bother me...
1) It seems that you voted Cryonic chamber, because "it dealt with cryonics" a little higher than it should have been...
2) Effervesce is actually suprisingly strong. It doesn't seem that you thought about "what if there's 4 of them." Think about it: Delve allows you to remove 1 from the game using another one... so you're gaining 1 life for each W you use... yes, life-gain sucks for the most part, but you've gotta admit gaining 7+ life a turn for a W/x control deck isn't really too bad... as an instant I think it may even have seen play in W/U control...as a sorcery... maybe something like W/r or W/b... but it seems more like a combo/board control card to me... I think that was missed about it :D
I liked the article... its kind of a crash course of what to expect in a typical RS game. In the next article I would like to see a review and breakdown of some of the more popular archtypes. Doing some side by side comparison would be valuable. All in all I think it was well written and waiting to see more on RS.
@Edge of Autumn. It is a great utility spell. R/G Does not have all of the tools that a U/G or U/W Threshold deck would have. In the worst case it fixes any mana issues you might have. In the best case it is something that allows you to dump 2 cards in your 'yard and gain a card. This deck doesn't need more than 4 mana except for the the scrounger, so its never a huge sacrifice to blow up a land.
@Springing Tiger. This card is more often than not a 5/5 for 4. It becomes an immediate threat to the table and often times people will go out of there way to destroy it, this includes double blocking. That or they completely ignore it because they are worried about the Mongrel or the unmorphed Raider. Its a great threshold creature and if its not taken seriously it can do some damage
@Battlefield Scrounger. I think that 1 of is a good choice, this card is a card that will often help you to finish games. It can also help to replenish some of your resources. The trick is on how to effectively use this creature and its ability.
The only thing i can gripe about is the stone rains and the Lightning Axes. The Axes are Meta dependant, meaning that if the format is filled with 4 or 5 toughness creatures its ok. But if the format is smaller then something else can be used. As far as the stone rains are concerned, i was one of the people that think that Incenerates would work better and i stand by this, but i do understand why they can be used. They help to provide good card advantage. 3 Mana is a tough slot for it though, i would be much more comfortable with a 1 or 2 cc card. This will help with being able to play multiple threats on turns 3 and 4.
Man ... those unhinged lands look awesome, and I would only need 4 of each ... but it would cost @$75 :(
I thought the article was ok. It basically just listed the "good stuff" at each color and cc. I was hoping that you would break it down and show what cards excelled in aggro builds and what would be better choices for control.
Fact or Fiction, Rout, Oblivion Stone & Akroma's Vengeance are some other control cards that have worked for me.
The combo deck that was mentioned spiked my interest. Will you be featuring odd RS deck types in the future? I made a rs mill deck that is really fun and unexpected. I would love to see what other creative decks are out there.
Awesome Matt! I had always wondered about this formt and what it would take to build a good deck for it. It seems to have a good fanbase all its own! Great job!
Copy enchantment seems fun, but rether wouldn't touch it. It'd have to be hardcast and the enchantment its copying already in play. I usually don't have a problem with the coronets, they work fine, especially with the unstable mutations. I tried out the riftwings, but prefer the flying men. The auratouched mage got cut right away, and i'm trying akroma, angel of wrath and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. I'm also looking at blazing archon and followed footsteps. The mana base I tweaked... I cut an adarkar waste, 2 terramorphics, 1 plain, 1 island, 1 new benalia, and 1 tolaria west, to add 4 flagstones of trokair and 4 hallowed fountain. The rest of the deck is minus the mage and plus 2 grand arbiters and a followed footsteps, which gets fun fast, but a little to slow for my tastes. More testing will tell. Any more ideas anyone? A fun, and usually, budget deck, try it! Thanks again Lythand, was definately on the back burner 'til this..
The Retether are still missing in the decklist above...
What about Copy Enchantment? You could cut of the 4-ofs to be more flexible by using the CE. It even triggers comes into play, so will get the 4 life from Fetters or draw the card from Plax.
Regards
EB
When i wrote the article, I had this deck list. I tested it a few times and then submitted it to a fellow clan mate for editting. However that clan mate had been busy and never got to me. I did some cahnges to the deck and more testing. My inexperiences in article writing, forgot to change the original deck list. Here is the updated.
4 Compulsive Research
4 Faith's Fetters
3 Infiltrator's Magemark
10 Island
10 Plains
4 Spirit Link
4 Auramancer's Guise
2 Azorius Signet
4 Looter il-Kor
4 Magus of the Bazaar
4 Retether
4 Riftwing Cloudskate
3 Shielding Plax
Sideboard
4 Mana Leak
3 Repeal
4 Worship
4 Magus of the Jar
I have always been a skeptical one on running 1 ofs. I may try it though. See how it performs. A few of them though are needed as four offs. Auramancers Guise and Spirit link are the main ones. Riftwing and the Faiths fetters are there for dealing with spot annoyances. And yes there are some changes like dual lands that could be added. But I was working this with a bidget. Fianlly, I did test the deck with Daybreak coranet. Problem is, when you cast retether, and if you have no enchantsments out on any creatures yet, it will stay in the Graveyard for lack of legal target.
One of my favourite fun decks to play at the moment is Zur, with planty of enchantments including the magemarks, once he's out it becomes real fun chosing just which encjhantment to grab for maximum effect, not winning effect, but fun effect. I just put in a retether when I drew one, but unlike you seck I don't get enough enchantments into the GY to be much use. I'll give yours a go and let you know how it plays out. Thanks, good article.
I just gotta sugest daybreak coronet, I think it could easily replace the flickerform. I don't know about you, but in my testing I tried flickerform and never once used it, got cut after only a few games. Maybe even replace the spirit link, but not sure. I also ran flying men over riftwing, and unstable mutations over gigadrowse, reading your article it doesn't sound like it did too good, love 'em in mine. Shielding plax is a good idea, didn't think of it in mine. I love looter il-kor, he's in half my blue decks. Land base could definately be tweaked, but its probably all to do with budget, not that expensive of a deck. Don't know why you run so much white mana though, I understand you need it for retether, and occasionally ther other auras, but nowhere as much. I remember when urzas block was around, by far the most powerful block to see print. A really good article though, thanks.
-plax is against removal
-if you run 1 of them, you have less of a chance of drawing them, (and then discarding and retethering them)
-three deams has the potential to be good, but seems to expensive for me (mana wise)
my decklist-
creatures-
flying men x4
looter il-kor x4
magus of bazaar x4
auratouched mage x1 (not too sure about, probably cut)
other spells-
auramancer's guise x3
daybreak coronet x3
spirit link x2
shielding plax x2
unstable mutation x3
infiltrator's magemark x2
retether x4
compulsive research x3
ancestral vision x3 (excellent card drawing)
azorious signet x3
land-
adarkar wastes x4
terramorphic expanse x2
plains x4
island x7
new benalia x2
tolaria west x2
Your decklist is missing the Retethers...
You could have taken some of the spirits of the old list by adding Three Dreams as an ersatz-Enlightened Tutor and instead of playing a lot of unsorted 2-ofs use a bunch of 1-ofs. This way, up the number of Signets to 4.
To add some structure play 4 of the Research - it's gold!
Last but not least, what is your plan against spot-removal?
Overall, very good effort. I liked the brief history lesson and trying to bring that deck into todays standard.
Its nice to see a review of a fun deck. I might just have to try out a version of my own...
Good job Lythand.
I hope this article recieves better approval then the last.
Nice to know what's going on inside the judges' minds when rating cards. Also I hope this kind of articles will increase the number of contestants we have so far.
I think normally I would agree with that except for the distinction made between the free cards in TSP and FUT. For example I dont think that you could replicate for free as many copies of wheel of fate as you wanted, wheras you can with pact of the titan.
As always, a great read.
One quick question. Why is it 61 cards?
This is finally what I been waiting on. Feedback. Not only do I get the feedback on how my cards could do better, but how others could of improved as well. It was like a big class on card design. Excellent job. Only critique I have, is that instead of addressing each poster as if you were singling them out, word it as you are addressing a class. There is a lot of you you you, when it would be better worded as " we can learn from this submission....." Other then that I liked it.
I'm not a judge, but I'm pretty sure that Chord/Stir would work with Walkers. CR 203.3a says: "The converted mana cost of an object with no mana cost is 0."
I'm glad you liked Teferi's Nightmare, and I can't argue with disliking the art either. I'm much more of an ideas guy than an art director, and I still tend to have a hangup over using someone elses art off the internet, even with their permission, so tend to only take art which I then modify, or create from scratch. As you can see, my art skills are mediocre at best. :)
I'm pretty pleased with both my entries for the second half. It was a truly excellent restriction to work with, and I'm glad people picked up on the flavor of both cards. Invert Reality does have a good few ways to be abused, but they all take a hefty bit of effort. Still, traumatizing and haunted echoing yourself, using Jhoira, Mind's Desire, manipulate fate, Arc-Slogger, Orcish Librarian or even just lobotomising yourself would be cool.
I only submitted the second half because we did not have permission from the contestants to use submissions from the first half. One of the criticisms of this article idea from the beginning is that some people would not like having their cards judged in a very public place like this. Therefore, only cards whose authors explicitly granted permission for their use made the article.
I think the writing would have been helped by having some opposing points of view presented. Hopefully the comments will help in that respect! :)
I encourage you to spell out anything cool about your entries that you think I might miss when judging the card. However, I am going to judge the card based on what is inside the four borders. If I have to read some other source to figure out why the card does what it does, then there is something wrong with the flavor of the card (exceptions can be made for other cards, ie the July card cycles). Why does Planar Being have protection from all colors? Why is it all colors? You could infer trampling from the art, but it is clearly not flying. Why doesn't it have a CMC? How is it related to the RFG zone? These are questions the card won't answer by itself.
The overall writing isn't bad, however, why does this only cover the 2nd part?
Also.. Planar Beeing isn't a reference to the normal magic-events, reading the short backgroundinformation that I gave in my first post for the 1st part should make that clear. Next time I won't just hint at my precious posting, I'll directlink to it. =/
Also, since this contest had special rules, I made a common and a rare for each part... since the overall rating mattered more, thus creating printable, solid commons and experimental rares that stretch the bounderies as we know them a little. Next Time I build a whole set arround a months theme I guess I will have to make it even more obvious then using the same expansionsymbol. *sigh*
Hmmm...you are quite right Evu, I did not notice the interaction between having one Effervesce in the graveyard and one RFG. That does become a good deal more powerful. I'm still not sure that it's worth a card slot in a deck, but now at least there is a question about it.
It would not be the first time I've missed something about a card. Please, if there is something really cool but subtle about your card, point it out in the forums!
You could justify Walkers as a green creature just using the name and creature type. My thing is, you are less likely to play this in a green deck than any other color. Tying this card to forests or elves somehow would have helped its flavor. Like "If you control an Elf, ~ gains shroud. If you control a forest, ~ gains trample."
I'm not 100% certain that Chord trick works. Chord says that you have to have a converted mana cost of X or less, but Walkers has no converted mana cost, so I'm not sure it's a legal target. A creature with a converted mana cost of 0, yes, but one with no converted mana cost? I think that's the same principal with Stir the Grave - you couldn't reanimate this for B, since there is no CMC on the creature. I'd love a judge's input on that, though. There may not even be a rule in magic addressing the issue, since AFAIK there has never been a creature without a CMC. Well, morphs have no CMC when they are in play, but they do in your hand. Except Zoetic Cavern. But that's not a creature in your hand. So I'm back to my original statement; I don't think there has been a creature with no CMC printed yet.
hk3family, I did give Cryonic Suspension Chamber an extra point in flavor because I think Cryonics is cool. I don't think that effected the overall result much. If you really want me to skew the results, you'll need to make a Cryonic Ninja. Like Sub-Zero. If you could somehow make him a Robot, Pirate, or a Cowboy as well that's all the better.
Thanks for taking the time to write this up, khirareq. It's great to have verbal feedback instead of (well, in addition to) just a bunch of numbers.
HK, you understood Effervesce perfectly. :) One in the grave and one RFGed (and I'm assuming this would be in a block where Delve was a major mechanic) would form a hard-to-disrupt engine that says "W: Gain 1 life". As an instant I think it would be too powerful. As a Sorcery it might be slightly on the weak side, but could find a home in the right kind of deck. This also explains why it's a common: I wanted the combo to be possible in Limited. Though, depending on whether it was in a big or a small set, and whether there were any other cards that used the same mechanic, it might need to go up to uncommon.
I wondered whether I should say something about how it was intended to be used in my submission post, but decided that cards should stand on their own. That might have been a mistake. The card got a very low score for playability, and I think part of the reason is that not all of the judges fully understood it.
As for Walkers Upon the Land, it seems khirareq had about the same thought process I did. I figured that a creature with no mana cost can afford to be a little better than any existing creature with a mana cost, since you can already Zombify any costed creature on turn 4, but you still have the option of playing it fairly. I searched Gatherer for something that would justify the design I wanted to make, and when I came to Simic Sky Swallower, I decided that Walkers was fair.
However, there is a problem with it that I didn't realize until after I submitted it: Chord of Calling. Play any Green creature on turn 1 and you can Chord out the Walkers on turn 2. That doesn't leave your opponent a lot of time to find Wrath of God. Play an Elvish Champion on turn 3 (which is one of the intended uses) and it gets even worse. I wouldn't want those two cards to be in Extended at the same time. But aside from that, I think the card is probably strong without being broken.
I think that the keywords justify it as a Green card. No doubt it would see more play in Black decks, but that's how it goes with reanimation targets. Look at what people are reanimating these days -- the colors are all over the place.
My personal favorite cards from June's Stage 2 were Discarded Hammer and Teferi's Nightmare. The former interprets the rules in a way that's elegant in its simplicity. The latter has great mechanics and flavor -- trade this with another phased-out card; something horrible goes wrong while it's phased out, and look what it comes back as! -- and it doesn't hurt that Phasing is one of my favorite keywords. Not a fan of the artwork, though.
Good to know what you thought on each card, I like the "lesson learned" portion. However, 2 things bother me...
1) It seems that you voted Cryonic chamber, because "it dealt with cryonics" a little higher than it should have been...
2) Effervesce is actually suprisingly strong. It doesn't seem that you thought about "what if there's 4 of them." Think about it: Delve allows you to remove 1 from the game using another one... so you're gaining 1 life for each W you use... yes, life-gain sucks for the most part, but you've gotta admit gaining 7+ life a turn for a W/x control deck isn't really too bad... as an instant I think it may even have seen play in W/U control...as a sorcery... maybe something like W/r or W/b... but it seems more like a combo/board control card to me... I think that was missed about it :D
Just my $2.47 (After inflation and taxes)
~HK~
I liked the article... its kind of a crash course of what to expect in a typical RS game. In the next article I would like to see a review and breakdown of some of the more popular archtypes. Doing some side by side comparison would be valuable. All in all I think it was well written and waiting to see more on RS.
A great article about a great format. Can't wait to see what 10th has to add.
Alex, that comment was from me BTW.
Rich,
Aka Me5794
@Edge of Autumn. It is a great utility spell. R/G Does not have all of the tools that a U/G or U/W Threshold deck would have. In the worst case it fixes any mana issues you might have. In the best case it is something that allows you to dump 2 cards in your 'yard and gain a card. This deck doesn't need more than 4 mana except for the the scrounger, so its never a huge sacrifice to blow up a land.
@Springing Tiger. This card is more often than not a 5/5 for 4. It becomes an immediate threat to the table and often times people will go out of there way to destroy it, this includes double blocking. That or they completely ignore it because they are worried about the Mongrel or the unmorphed Raider. Its a great threshold creature and if its not taken seriously it can do some damage
@Battlefield Scrounger. I think that 1 of is a good choice, this card is a card that will often help you to finish games. It can also help to replenish some of your resources. The trick is on how to effectively use this creature and its ability.
The only thing i can gripe about is the stone rains and the Lightning Axes. The Axes are Meta dependant, meaning that if the format is filled with 4 or 5 toughness creatures its ok. But if the format is smaller then something else can be used. As far as the stone rains are concerned, i was one of the people that think that Incenerates would work better and i stand by this, but i do understand why they can be used. They help to provide good card advantage. 3 Mana is a tough slot for it though, i would be much more comfortable with a 1 or 2 cc card. This will help with being able to play multiple threats on turns 3 and 4.
Great article BTW!
Man ... those unhinged lands look awesome, and I would only need 4 of each ... but it would cost @$75 :(
I thought the article was ok. It basically just listed the "good stuff" at each color and cc. I was hoping that you would break it down and show what cards excelled in aggro builds and what would be better choices for control.
Fact or Fiction, Rout, Oblivion Stone & Akroma's Vengeance are some other control cards that have worked for me.
The combo deck that was mentioned spiked my interest. Will you be featuring odd RS deck types in the future? I made a rs mill deck that is really fun and unexpected. I would love to see what other creative decks are out there.
CTRL-Q-E
"Passengers will refrain from killing my soul."
Awesome Matt! I had always wondered about this formt and what it would take to build a good deck for it. It seems to have a good fanbase all its own! Great job!