A few days ago I was watching the daily when someone brought up Heroes of the Storm. In the course of the discussion, the topic of simplicity arose. I contended that Chess is not a simple game and got a significant amount of backlash. I didn't understand why people thought Chess was simple when to me it clearly isn't. It relates back to a saying that Blizzard loves to design around, "Easy to learn, difficult to master." Does easy to learn constitute simple? Obviously not for that saying to hold true. So how do we separate games like Chess from games like Checkers? I believe both games have a property I'm going to call intuitive. With only some small explanation you can play both games. However, there is a cap to how good you can get at Checkers. There is a dominate strategy and the game is solvable. Chess has no dominate strategy and is not solvable for a human being. Chess and Checkers are both intuitive, but Checkers breaks down and becomes simple while Chess does not. Indeed Chess has a pretty enormous place in upper academia and institutions of higher learning. No simple game could accomplish that feat.
So really the contention was over the definition of the word Simple in relationship to games. I don't think a game that is intuitive and easy to learn is simple. Nor is a game that is difficult to learn necessarily Complex. Its about the number and impact of the decision you make.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
First Foray into Tiny Leaders
So at my new LGS, Tiny Leaders has taken off. I decided to get into the format, and am looking into building something neat. My first thought was something with Courser of Kruphix. Maybe Junk with Courser and Knight of the Reliquary for crazy value? Then I remembered my Shu Yun build. I really liked the idea of doing a Prowess-Storm deck where Shu Yun is the Storm combo kill condition. After a quick look through the ban list, it seems like the only card I would want to play that's banned, besides the obvious, is Balance.
An introduction to the format can be found here:
http://tinyleaders.blogspot.ca/p/tiny-leaders-magic-gathering-format.html
Things to keep in mind:
Each spell is essentially worth two damage since Shu Yun has Prowess and double strike. Counting his base power, that means we are trying to play seven spells and pay for the trigger. Also, because Shu Yun is a creature and not a spell, a la Tendrils of Agony, we can spread our damage over two turns if needed. We can do something like Distortion Strike swing for five. That sets us up to swing the next turn with a rebound spell, our opponent at 15, and already at 5 power. We would only need five spells and paying for the trigger at that point, and every attempt by our opponents to stop Shu Yun only makes him bigger.
The first step when building Storm is to look for where our mana comes from, where our cards come from, and what our kill condition is. We know that our kill condition is likely going to be our Commander, so our first priority is determining where our mana comes from.
Red is second only to black when it comes to ritual effects.
A search of Gatherer reveals these:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
That's a decent start but the meat is going to come from the artifacts.
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Mox Diamond
Lion's Eye Diamond
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
Tiny Leaders decks are 49 cards, and we have 15 mana cards here. That's a pretty solid number when we figure that we're going to have 15-20 land.
The next important point is figuring out how to set up for the kill.
The classic cantrips go in first:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Sleight of Hand
Impulse
Gitaxian Probe
Opt
Serum Visions
Sensei's Divining Top
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wild Guess
Think Twice
Frantic Search
Jeskai Ascendancy
This will smooth out our early turns and the low cost nature of the spells with up our storm count, but we do need to go net positive on cards for bulk to go off.
Wheel of Fortune
Meditate
Thirst for Knowledge
Ancestral Visions
Compulsive Research
Monastery Siege
Oona's Grace
Sphinx's Revelation
Invoke the Firemind
That's another 23 cards. Bringing us to 38 aready! Clearly some cuts are going to have to be made, but we'll par down later. That's our mana and draw packages, but how do we get to attack? How do we protect our general? What are our backup plans?
Well, there are a variety of ways to protect our general and push through damage.
Shadow Rift
Emerge Unscathed
Distortion Strike
Remand
Pact of Negation
Mental Misstep
Daze
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Feast and Famine
Silence
Snap
Snapback
God's Willing
Burn:
Lighting Blot
Chain Lightning
Rift Bolt
Forked Bolt
Other Removal:
Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
The Kill:
Hurkyl's Recall
Recall
Retract
I am trying to minimize other creatures since they don't trigger prowess, but three jump out as unskippable:
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Young Pyromancer
Mentor is better than Pyromancer here as we are built with lots of artifacts to trigger Prowess.
We are waaaaay over the card limit, so lets start paring down to a usable framework.
Mana:
We are keeping all of the rituals. They only generate Red mana, but they are all plus mana spells.
IN:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
Some of the artifact mana needed to go, but its difficult to decide what. Ultimately our desire to recall means that we want to keep the artifacts that can be replayed. I decided against Mox Diamond due to our low land count, and Lion's Eye Diamond since we can't play Past In Flames. Lotus Bloom is basically only useful if its in our opening hand, but the upside of a free spell that generates three mana is enormous. Chrome Mox needs to eat a spell to generate mana, but we are much more likely to have spells we can't cast than extra lands. Chrome Mox also has the upside of being able to hang out in play to wait for a recall if you just want the prowess trigger but don't want to eat a card. Mox Diamond will die if you don't pitch a land.
IN:
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
That's 13/49, onto Cantrips and Draw
We want to favor red mana since all of our rituals are red. Wild Guess being double red does make casting it pre-ritual awkward, so we are going to drop it.
IN:
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wheel of Fortune
Sensei's Divining Top
The strongest of the cantrips need to be included, especially the 0-1 mana variety.
IN:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Frantic Search
Compulsive Research gets passed over because its too slow, same thing with Oona's Grace. Sphinx's Revelation and Invoke the Firemind were too cute. Since we can generate a ton of mana, the X spells were another outlet for that mana. We have plenty to do with Shu Yun's trigger though, so having sinks probably won't be needed. Ancestral Visions is iffy, but a free spell that draws three cards is huge upside. If its in our opening hand than it unsuspends the turn after we play Shu Yun, which is perfect. Monastery Siege and Jeskai Ascendancy are permanents that give us huge upside. They both have a filter mode, and Siege can even be used to protect ourselves from removal. Meditate's drawback is pretty steep even though it draws so many cards. I'm going to cut it and Thirst due to their high cost relative to our mana generation.
IN:
Ancestral Visions
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendancy
That's another 12 cards, which brings us to 25 cards.
Here is where we have to make a call on how many lands we are going to run. Normally I'd start with 20, which is about 40%. I think we are running so much additional storm mana, and have so many cantrips, that we can safely run 15.
That gives us nine slots to play with. The back up win conditions we are going to run with are Monastery Mentor and Grapeshot. Young Pyromancer is great but we have very little space. We need to keep a Recall effect, Rebuild cycles and Retract costs one, but Hurkyl's Recall is the most flexible so we are going to run it. We can keep four cards for removal, and burn is likely our best bet, so in go Lightning Bolt, Rift Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Path to Exile. I choose Path since we are trying to kill people with regular damage. The bolts can all go to the dome, reducing our effective storm count. A bolt is 3 + 2, so we get a huge reduction in the resources we need to kill our opponent. We want to protect Shu Yun with spells for prowess instead of permanents. The Swords are great and they will probably find their way into the deck somewhere down the line, but right now they seem too mana intensive to be worth it. The last three slots are very hard to decide between. Distortion Strike is amazing and needs to be included. Mystical Tutor is non-negotiable. That basically makes it a fight between Mental Misstep and Daze. Daze can be cast on my own spells more readily so it gets the nod. This category really should be larger, but until the concept proves itself I'm not willing to run less mana or draw.
IN:
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Hurkyl's Recall
Lightning Bolt
Rift Bolt
Chain Lightning
Path to Exile
Distortion Strike
Daze
Mystical Tutor
Onto the lands!
We needs lots of red and blue, and comparatively little white. With the speed of the format a land that comes into play tapped is going to be a very real cost, so we need to play untapped lands at all costs.
Lets start where we always do for a three color deck
IN:
Plateu
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Sacred Foundry
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Arid Mesa
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
That's nine of our lands. Slots fill up in this format so fast.
Running all non-basics opens us up to hate, but we really don't have the luxury of running basics.
IN:
Clifftop Retreat
Sulfur Falls
Glacial Fortress
To increase our artifact count we are going to include the set of artifact lands
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Great Furnace
First Draft:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wheel of Fortune
Sensei's Divining Top
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Frantic Search
Ancestral Visions
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendancy
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Hurkyl's Recall
Lightning Bolt
Rift Bolt
Chain Lightning
Path to Exile
Distortion Strike
Daze
Mystical Tutor
Land
Plateau
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Sacred Foundry
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Arid Mesa
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Clifftop Retreat
Sulfur Falls
Glacial Fortress
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Great Furnace
We might want to find something to get our Commander haste since right now he has to hang out in play for a turn before going in for lethal. The next step is fabrication then testing. There will be many updates to follow.
Update #1, 2/7/2015
Got to play with the deck a bit over the last couple days. There were some good games but I made some mistakes while preparing for the format. First of all, the starting life total is 25 instead of 20. That five extra damage is hard to push through. Second, Mana Vault is banned and I missed it. Whoops! Third, the format is waaaaaaaaay more removal heavy than I anticipated. We do need our general to hang out in play for a turn to do anything, so we have to play more protection for him. We have some easy cuts so we'll start there.
OUT:
Mana Vault
Clifftop Retreat
Azorius Signet
Izzet Signet
We are going to need to be more consistent and rely less on speed. Boros Signet stays for density and because its the only Signet that can pay for Shu Yun's trigger. That's four slots that we get access to. We need more protection. It would be most helpful if it could be cast without needing to target an enemy spell. We definitely want one more counterspell, and one protection spell.
IN:
Izzet Charm
Emerge Unscathed
Izzet Charm is both a counterspell and a dig spell. It can even clear blockers out of the way!
Emerge Unscathed has rebound, which is a very good mechanic for us. It lets us protect our dude for a turn, then get a free trigger and evade blockers on the rebound.
I did find I wanted more burn with the life total so high. We have to be able to push through a lot more damage. We need to be able to use our burn for other reasons though, so we can't just shove Lava Spike into the list. We aren't go that deep quite yet.
IN:
Boros Charm
Another Charm makes its way into the list. This one will likely have only two modes, 4 to the noggin or Indestructible my stuff. Indestructible my stuff not only protects Shu Yun, but can help protect Mentor tokens from sweepers. That isn't super valuable since most sweepers in the the format are toughness based, and we can already protect them just by casting spells. Four damage is more than most spells can live up to in this environment unless we want to play Flame Rift.
IN:
Apostle's Blessing
This one is more iffy, but I like that it can be cast for a colorless mana while going off.
Other suspect cards,
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendency
Sensei's Divining Top
but we'll see where these changes land us.
An introduction to the format can be found here:
http://tinyleaders.blogspot.ca/p/tiny-leaders-magic-gathering-format.html
Things to keep in mind:
Each spell is essentially worth two damage since Shu Yun has Prowess and double strike. Counting his base power, that means we are trying to play seven spells and pay for the trigger. Also, because Shu Yun is a creature and not a spell, a la Tendrils of Agony, we can spread our damage over two turns if needed. We can do something like Distortion Strike swing for five. That sets us up to swing the next turn with a rebound spell, our opponent at 15, and already at 5 power. We would only need five spells and paying for the trigger at that point, and every attempt by our opponents to stop Shu Yun only makes him bigger.
The first step when building Storm is to look for where our mana comes from, where our cards come from, and what our kill condition is. We know that our kill condition is likely going to be our Commander, so our first priority is determining where our mana comes from.
Red is second only to black when it comes to ritual effects.
A search of Gatherer reveals these:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
That's a decent start but the meat is going to come from the artifacts.
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Mox Diamond
Lion's Eye Diamond
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
Tiny Leaders decks are 49 cards, and we have 15 mana cards here. That's a pretty solid number when we figure that we're going to have 15-20 land.
The next important point is figuring out how to set up for the kill.
The classic cantrips go in first:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Sleight of Hand
Impulse
Gitaxian Probe
Opt
Serum Visions
Sensei's Divining Top
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wild Guess
Think Twice
Frantic Search
Jeskai Ascendancy
This will smooth out our early turns and the low cost nature of the spells with up our storm count, but we do need to go net positive on cards for bulk to go off.
Wheel of Fortune
Meditate
Thirst for Knowledge
Ancestral Visions
Compulsive Research
Monastery Siege
Oona's Grace
Sphinx's Revelation
Invoke the Firemind
That's another 23 cards. Bringing us to 38 aready! Clearly some cuts are going to have to be made, but we'll par down later. That's our mana and draw packages, but how do we get to attack? How do we protect our general? What are our backup plans?
Well, there are a variety of ways to protect our general and push through damage.
Shadow Rift
Emerge Unscathed
Distortion Strike
Remand
Pact of Negation
Mental Misstep
Daze
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Feast and Famine
Silence
Snap
Snapback
God's Willing
Burn:
Lighting Blot
Chain Lightning
Rift Bolt
Forked Bolt
Other Removal:
Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
The Kill:
Hurkyl's Recall
Recall
Retract
I am trying to minimize other creatures since they don't trigger prowess, but three jump out as unskippable:
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Young Pyromancer
Mentor is better than Pyromancer here as we are built with lots of artifacts to trigger Prowess.
We are waaaaay over the card limit, so lets start paring down to a usable framework.
Mana:
We are keeping all of the rituals. They only generate Red mana, but they are all plus mana spells.
IN:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
Some of the artifact mana needed to go, but its difficult to decide what. Ultimately our desire to recall means that we want to keep the artifacts that can be replayed. I decided against Mox Diamond due to our low land count, and Lion's Eye Diamond since we can't play Past In Flames. Lotus Bloom is basically only useful if its in our opening hand, but the upside of a free spell that generates three mana is enormous. Chrome Mox needs to eat a spell to generate mana, but we are much more likely to have spells we can't cast than extra lands. Chrome Mox also has the upside of being able to hang out in play to wait for a recall if you just want the prowess trigger but don't want to eat a card. Mox Diamond will die if you don't pitch a land.
IN:
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
That's 13/49, onto Cantrips and Draw
We want to favor red mana since all of our rituals are red. Wild Guess being double red does make casting it pre-ritual awkward, so we are going to drop it.
IN:
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wheel of Fortune
Sensei's Divining Top
The strongest of the cantrips need to be included, especially the 0-1 mana variety.
IN:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Frantic Search
Compulsive Research gets passed over because its too slow, same thing with Oona's Grace. Sphinx's Revelation and Invoke the Firemind were too cute. Since we can generate a ton of mana, the X spells were another outlet for that mana. We have plenty to do with Shu Yun's trigger though, so having sinks probably won't be needed. Ancestral Visions is iffy, but a free spell that draws three cards is huge upside. If its in our opening hand than it unsuspends the turn after we play Shu Yun, which is perfect. Monastery Siege and Jeskai Ascendancy are permanents that give us huge upside. They both have a filter mode, and Siege can even be used to protect ourselves from removal. Meditate's drawback is pretty steep even though it draws so many cards. I'm going to cut it and Thirst due to their high cost relative to our mana generation.
IN:
Ancestral Visions
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendancy
That's another 12 cards, which brings us to 25 cards.
Here is where we have to make a call on how many lands we are going to run. Normally I'd start with 20, which is about 40%. I think we are running so much additional storm mana, and have so many cantrips, that we can safely run 15.
That gives us nine slots to play with. The back up win conditions we are going to run with are Monastery Mentor and Grapeshot. Young Pyromancer is great but we have very little space. We need to keep a Recall effect, Rebuild cycles and Retract costs one, but Hurkyl's Recall is the most flexible so we are going to run it. We can keep four cards for removal, and burn is likely our best bet, so in go Lightning Bolt, Rift Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Path to Exile. I choose Path since we are trying to kill people with regular damage. The bolts can all go to the dome, reducing our effective storm count. A bolt is 3 + 2, so we get a huge reduction in the resources we need to kill our opponent. We want to protect Shu Yun with spells for prowess instead of permanents. The Swords are great and they will probably find their way into the deck somewhere down the line, but right now they seem too mana intensive to be worth it. The last three slots are very hard to decide between. Distortion Strike is amazing and needs to be included. Mystical Tutor is non-negotiable. That basically makes it a fight between Mental Misstep and Daze. Daze can be cast on my own spells more readily so it gets the nod. This category really should be larger, but until the concept proves itself I'm not willing to run less mana or draw.
IN:
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Hurkyl's Recall
Lightning Bolt
Rift Bolt
Chain Lightning
Path to Exile
Distortion Strike
Daze
Mystical Tutor
Onto the lands!
We needs lots of red and blue, and comparatively little white. With the speed of the format a land that comes into play tapped is going to be a very real cost, so we need to play untapped lands at all costs.
Lets start where we always do for a three color deck
IN:
Plateu
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Sacred Foundry
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Arid Mesa
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
That's nine of our lands. Slots fill up in this format so fast.
Running all non-basics opens us up to hate, but we really don't have the luxury of running basics.
IN:
Clifftop Retreat
Sulfur Falls
Glacial Fortress
To increase our artifact count we are going to include the set of artifact lands
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Great Furnace
First Draft:
Desperate Ritual
Pyretic Ritual
Seething Song
Rite of Flame
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Mox Opal
Boros, Azorius, Izzet Signet
Lotus Bloom
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice
Wheel of Fortune
Sensei's Divining Top
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Frantic Search
Ancestral Visions
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendancy
Monastery Mentor
Grapeshot
Hurkyl's Recall
Lightning Bolt
Rift Bolt
Chain Lightning
Path to Exile
Distortion Strike
Daze
Mystical Tutor
Land
Plateau
Volcanic Island
Tundra
Sacred Foundry
Steam Vents
Hallowed Fountain
Arid Mesa
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Clifftop Retreat
Sulfur Falls
Glacial Fortress
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod
Great Furnace
We might want to find something to get our Commander haste since right now he has to hang out in play for a turn before going in for lethal. The next step is fabrication then testing. There will be many updates to follow.
Update #1, 2/7/2015
Got to play with the deck a bit over the last couple days. There were some good games but I made some mistakes while preparing for the format. First of all, the starting life total is 25 instead of 20. That five extra damage is hard to push through. Second, Mana Vault is banned and I missed it. Whoops! Third, the format is waaaaaaaaay more removal heavy than I anticipated. We do need our general to hang out in play for a turn to do anything, so we have to play more protection for him. We have some easy cuts so we'll start there.
OUT:
Mana Vault
Clifftop Retreat
Azorius Signet
Izzet Signet
We are going to need to be more consistent and rely less on speed. Boros Signet stays for density and because its the only Signet that can pay for Shu Yun's trigger. That's four slots that we get access to. We need more protection. It would be most helpful if it could be cast without needing to target an enemy spell. We definitely want one more counterspell, and one protection spell.
IN:
Izzet Charm
Emerge Unscathed
Izzet Charm is both a counterspell and a dig spell. It can even clear blockers out of the way!
Emerge Unscathed has rebound, which is a very good mechanic for us. It lets us protect our dude for a turn, then get a free trigger and evade blockers on the rebound.
I did find I wanted more burn with the life total so high. We have to be able to push through a lot more damage. We need to be able to use our burn for other reasons though, so we can't just shove Lava Spike into the list. We aren't go that deep quite yet.
IN:
Boros Charm
Another Charm makes its way into the list. This one will likely have only two modes, 4 to the noggin or Indestructible my stuff. Indestructible my stuff not only protects Shu Yun, but can help protect Mentor tokens from sweepers. That isn't super valuable since most sweepers in the the format are toughness based, and we can already protect them just by casting spells. Four damage is more than most spells can live up to in this environment unless we want to play Flame Rift.
IN:
Apostle's Blessing
This one is more iffy, but I like that it can be cast for a colorless mana while going off.
Other suspect cards,
Monastery Siege
Jeskai Ascendency
Sensei's Divining Top
but we'll see where these changes land us.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Build of the Week: Shu Yun
So its Friday, time for another build of the week.
I have wanted to make a deck based around Sunforger for quite some time. I even shoehorned it into Kaalia for a while till I realized that really wasn't what I wanted that deck to be about. I also realized that I really wanted it to include blue mana. I almost put together a Narset deck with that general theme. It would work out fine but Narset has disincentives for playing other creatures and voltroning a 6 mana non-green creature is not the easiest thing in the world. Imagine my delight when they printed a Jeskai colored general that only costs three mana, made excellent use of instants and sorceries and further rewarded a voltron strategy.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest is a tight package of awesome. He gives us a reliable source of Prowess, making the deck kind of have a storm flavor to it. He also combines well with other creatures, something that Narset doesn't do. He also lets us do quite a bit with extra mana that lying around and is totally fine with playing reactive cards as opposed to Narset wanting to play primarily with proactive cards for her trigger.
So where do we start? Well like I said in the first paragraph, Sunforger!
Orim's Thunder
Oblation
Return to Dust
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Azorius Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Reiterate
Wild Ricochet
That's 19 cards, and not even all the spells we want! Sunforger has a very deep pool and finding the right set of cards is going to be difficult. We'll leave this where it is for now and cull from it later. I suppose the question is what other spells do we have to make room for?
Can trips:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Sorceries:
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Honestly these sections are a bit more anemic than they will be in the finished product. We could pack this list full of spells, but then we would miss out on the the side of Shu Yun that we want to capitalize on...being buffed up.
Enchantments:
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
Those are some of the premium buffs. There are tons more available but these are a solid starting place for us. Quite a few of them are protection for us but there are some spells we can through in the mix for protection as well.
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Memory Lapse
These are a good starting place, and even add to our Sunforger options.
That puts us up to 46 cards. Assuming 34 land, a bit light but we have lots of low cost options and cantrips, that leaves us with 20 cards. We definitely want to have other dudes to play, so what are some good creature options?
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
That's 10 slots left so lets put together some artifact acceleration:
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
That leaves us with a couple of unused slots. Since Prowess also functions on artifacts, I want to try Hurkyl's Recall. Also in goes another two Rebound cards, Distortion Strike and Recurring Insight. Rebound seems like a strong way to get free Prowess and Jeskai Ascendancy triggers.
We are already full and there are so many cards yet to add!
Orim's Thunder
Oblation
Return to Dust
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Azorius Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Reiterate
Wild Ricochet
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Memory Lapse
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
Hurkyl's Recall.
Distortion Strike
Recurring Insight.
This actually manages to be 4 cards over already.
OUT
Azorius Charm
Orim's Thunder
Return to Dust
Reiterate
I will miss Reiterate the most since buyback is pretty solid with Prowess, but its also crazy mana intensive. Azorius Charm is basically just a worse version of Jeskai Charm excepting the cantrip portion, but if you have a Sunforger going using it to just draw a card seems weak. That brings us to par for our cards. We could do more optimizing now, but lets get out mana together first.
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Arid Mesa
Hallowed Fountain
Steam Vents
Sacred Foundry
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Plateau
Mystic Monastery
Adarkar Wastes
Shivan Reef
Battlefield Forge
Glacial Fortress
Sulfur Falls
Clifftop Retreat
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Celestial Colonnade
That gives us a solid base of colored sources. We definitely want to cant toward blue mana since a lot of our cantrips need blue mana early and can be used to find our other colors.
3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
And now for some cool utility lands!
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Slayer's Stronghold
Springjack Pasture
Kher Keep
Reliquary Tower
Ancient Tomb
Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
Desolate Lighthouse
Flamekin Village
Halimar Depths
Tolaria West
So the full initial list is:
Oblation
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Wild Ricochet
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Mystical Tutor
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
Hurkyl's Recall.
Distortion Strike
Recurring Insight.
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Arid Mesa
Hallowed Fountain
Steam Vents
Sacred Foundry
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Plateau
Mystic Monastery
Adarkar Wastes
Shivan Reef
Battlefield Forge
Glacial Fortress
Sulfur Falls
Clifftop Retreat
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Celestial Colonnade 3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Slayer's Stronghold
Springjack Pasture
Kher Keep
Reliquary Tower
Ancient Tomb
Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
Desolate Lighthouse
Flamekin Village
Halimar Depths
Tolaria West
There are a couple directions we could take based on performance. We could put in more Free spells and build more for a Prowess Storm deck which feels unique and cool. That would likely involve less equipment and more spells, including putting in more low cost artifacts. The other way that I can see the deck evolving is to cut some of the spells and play up the enlightened tutor package for some sweet hate cards. Note about the final decklist, I realized I hadn't put Mystical Tutor in the deck when its obviously awesome so I cut Memory Lapse for it. Overall the deck could use more tutors, but again I like to sus out what I'm tutoring for before putting them in the deck, and tutors kinda spoil the feel of EDH by making your unwieldy 100 card deck more repetitive.
I feel like this would be a fun deck to put together and hopefully I'll be back in a couple days to suggest changes.
I have wanted to make a deck based around Sunforger for quite some time. I even shoehorned it into Kaalia for a while till I realized that really wasn't what I wanted that deck to be about. I also realized that I really wanted it to include blue mana. I almost put together a Narset deck with that general theme. It would work out fine but Narset has disincentives for playing other creatures and voltroning a 6 mana non-green creature is not the easiest thing in the world. Imagine my delight when they printed a Jeskai colored general that only costs three mana, made excellent use of instants and sorceries and further rewarded a voltron strategy.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest is a tight package of awesome. He gives us a reliable source of Prowess, making the deck kind of have a storm flavor to it. He also combines well with other creatures, something that Narset doesn't do. He also lets us do quite a bit with extra mana that lying around and is totally fine with playing reactive cards as opposed to Narset wanting to play primarily with proactive cards for her trigger.
So where do we start? Well like I said in the first paragraph, Sunforger!
Orim's Thunder
Oblation
Return to Dust
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Azorius Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Reiterate
Wild Ricochet
That's 19 cards, and not even all the spells we want! Sunforger has a very deep pool and finding the right set of cards is going to be difficult. We'll leave this where it is for now and cull from it later. I suppose the question is what other spells do we have to make room for?
Can trips:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Sorceries:
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Honestly these sections are a bit more anemic than they will be in the finished product. We could pack this list full of spells, but then we would miss out on the the side of Shu Yun that we want to capitalize on...being buffed up.
Enchantments:
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
Those are some of the premium buffs. There are tons more available but these are a solid starting place for us. Quite a few of them are protection for us but there are some spells we can through in the mix for protection as well.
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Memory Lapse
These are a good starting place, and even add to our Sunforger options.
That puts us up to 46 cards. Assuming 34 land, a bit light but we have lots of low cost options and cantrips, that leaves us with 20 cards. We definitely want to have other dudes to play, so what are some good creature options?
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
That's 10 slots left so lets put together some artifact acceleration:
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
That leaves us with a couple of unused slots. Since Prowess also functions on artifacts, I want to try Hurkyl's Recall. Also in goes another two Rebound cards, Distortion Strike and Recurring Insight. Rebound seems like a strong way to get free Prowess and Jeskai Ascendancy triggers.
We are already full and there are so many cards yet to add!
Orim's Thunder
Oblation
Return to Dust
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Azorius Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Reiterate
Wild Ricochet
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Memory Lapse
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
Hurkyl's Recall.
Distortion Strike
Recurring Insight.
This actually manages to be 4 cards over already.
OUT
Azorius Charm
Orim's Thunder
Return to Dust
Reiterate
I will miss Reiterate the most since buyback is pretty solid with Prowess, but its also crazy mana intensive. Azorius Charm is basically just a worse version of Jeskai Charm excepting the cantrip portion, but if you have a Sunforger going using it to just draw a card seems weak. That brings us to par for our cards. We could do more optimizing now, but lets get out mana together first.
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Arid Mesa
Hallowed Fountain
Steam Vents
Sacred Foundry
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Plateau
Mystic Monastery
Adarkar Wastes
Shivan Reef
Battlefield Forge
Glacial Fortress
Sulfur Falls
Clifftop Retreat
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Celestial Colonnade
That gives us a solid base of colored sources. We definitely want to cant toward blue mana since a lot of our cantrips need blue mana early and can be used to find our other colors.
3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
And now for some cool utility lands!
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Slayer's Stronghold
Springjack Pasture
Kher Keep
Reliquary Tower
Ancient Tomb
Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
Desolate Lighthouse
Flamekin Village
Halimar Depths
Tolaria West
So the full initial list is:
Oblation
Turn//Burn
Odds//Ends
Wear//Tear
Boros Charm
Jeskai Charm
Izzet Charm
Absorb
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chaos Warp
Enlightened Tutor
Dismantling Blow
Momentary Blink
Wild Ricochet
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Opt
Gitaxian Probe
Slight of Hand
Impulse
Time Spiral
Treasure Cruise
Seize the Day
Skullclamp
Steel of the Godhead
Jeskai Ascendancy
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Whispersilk Cloak
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Batterskull
God's Willing
Emerge Unscathed
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Arcane Denial
Remand
Mystical Tutor
Narset, Enlightened Master
Godo, Bandit Warlord
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Geist of Saint Traft
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Monastery Mentor
Puresteel Paladin
Invisible Stalker
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Thran Dynamo
Gilded Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Boros Signet
Hurkyl's Recall.
Distortion Strike
Recurring Insight.
Scalding Tarn
Flooded Strand
Arid Mesa
Hallowed Fountain
Steam Vents
Sacred Foundry
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Plateau
Mystic Monastery
Adarkar Wastes
Shivan Reef
Battlefield Forge
Glacial Fortress
Sulfur Falls
Clifftop Retreat
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Celestial Colonnade 3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Slayer's Stronghold
Springjack Pasture
Kher Keep
Reliquary Tower
Ancient Tomb
Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
Desolate Lighthouse
Flamekin Village
Halimar Depths
Tolaria West
There are a couple directions we could take based on performance. We could put in more Free spells and build more for a Prowess Storm deck which feels unique and cool. That would likely involve less equipment and more spells, including putting in more low cost artifacts. The other way that I can see the deck evolving is to cut some of the spells and play up the enlightened tutor package for some sweet hate cards. Note about the final decklist, I realized I hadn't put Mystical Tutor in the deck when its obviously awesome so I cut Memory Lapse for it. Overall the deck could use more tutors, but again I like to sus out what I'm tutoring for before putting them in the deck, and tutors kinda spoil the feel of EDH by making your unwieldy 100 card deck more repetitive.
I feel like this would be a fun deck to put together and hopefully I'll be back in a couple days to suggest changes.
Bans, the hows and whys
The recent bannings of Birthing Pod, Dig Through Time, and Treasure Cruise have upended the magic world. There are lots of opinions and while people debate the validity of the bans, the method of WotC's bans is definitely becoming much different than it has been in the past.
The specific bans that we just got for modern seem fairly legitimate. Treasure Cruise was totally busted and Dig Through Time and Birthing Pod had the ability to piece together combo decks. Pod has had a really solid run throughout Modern's existence. I don't think there's a deck with a better pedigree. LSV, arguably Pod's best player, agreed that Pod has had it coming. My argument is not with these cards but rather the way that the banned list is being used to shape Modern.
Its come up many times how ridiculous the Modern banned list is, but to understand it we have to look into the goals that Wizards has for the format. Aaron Forsythe talked about the order they want new players to get into the various formats of Magic. It went Duels of the Planeswalkers > Sealed > Draft > Standard > Modern > Legacy. Vintage basically doesn't exist in paper form in any meaningful way. We can see that they have Modern somewhere between Legacy and Standard. Legacy and Standard are completely different formats, and trying to find a middle ground is difficult. Modern was created with the best of intentions, but it has several challenges that WotC did not anticipate. Specifically, having a large non-rotating format lends itself to stagnation for long periods of time. Legacy is a great example. You would think with such a huge number of available cards that people would be innovating whole new archetypes all the time. That just doesn't happen, even with there being something worth winning, Legacy doesn't turn over constantly. People establish solid decks and attempt to master them rather than constantly shifting around. There are new archetypes that show up in Legacy or radical reinventions of existing decks, but that isn't the norm. Standard, more than any other format, rewards experimentation and innovation. You have much smaller card pools, so finding something that attacks the status quo is more meaningful, and easier since Standard gets a significant number of new cards with each set that's printed. The same number of cards is almost meaningless in Eternal formats since so many of them can't compete with the best of the best.
That is the essential problem with Modern. Modern is an Eternal format. Its card pool doesn't reach back all the way to the game's start, but it doesn't rotate. Established decks are much easier to pick up and master rather than to constantly be on the look out for the "next thing." Innovation is certainly possible but many options are going to be crowded out by their superior cousins. Modern is much closer to Legacy than it is to Standard, except there is no Force of Will to hold the combo decks down. This means that WotC has had to take a much larger hand in the format than it has in formats in the past.
They have stated that they don't want combo to be consistently faster than turn four. They also have stated that they want to promote diversity. Their bans have become less about stopping mistakes like Skullclamp from running wild and more about trying to shape the format into a version that is more like Standard. They want to encourage diversity to the point where they are banning cards to disable decks. They did the same thing with Deathrite Shaman and Bloodbraid Elf. There are cards that they have never allowed to be legal like Jace the Mind Sculptor or Ancestral Visions. They are over banning cards to try to promote diversity rather than unbanning cards that would be great checks on the format. Even from the cards above Deathrite Shaman would have been an outstanding unban in the face of Delve and Pod. Both of those strategies rely on the Graveyard, but its like they are so afraid of admitting that any card that goes on the banned list was a mistake to put there that they can't take it off. They have to make up their minds. Either the banned list is a living document where cards come off and on based on the needs of the format, or the cards placed on the list are mistakes that only get banned under the direst of circumstances.
Using the banned list for Modern the way they are also undermines people's desire to commit to the format. Birthing Pod in particular feels pretty egregious for this reason. Pod has been near the top of the Modern food chain for a long time. Years in fact. Its won the most tournaments and a copy of it is almost always in the top eight. Banning it now, when so many people have committed their limited Magic budgets to playing it just feels like a slap in the face. It might have been a necessity, I don't have as much information as they do, but the fact that they are banning cards so frequently in Modern is testing people's patience. It would be like practicing Ryu for a Street Fighter tournament. Pouring your 4-6 hours a week that you have free, learning him and his match ups, and then a month or so out from the event that you've been practicing for Capcom says that Ryu is too ubiquitous and can't be played in tournaments anymore. You might just quit playing Street Fighter altogether than invest another 40-50 hours into learning another character. Take into account that Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were only legal for three months, a pittance of time in Eternal Formats, and people's anger over the bannings become even more understandable.
The question is, why are they going through so many hoops to try and promote diversity? I think the answer is because of the increase in the importance of coverage. Wizards has realized that the Pro Tour and Grand Prix coverage is great advertising in addition to the pinnacle of play. If the coverage is just going to be the same three decks for the Pro Tour they feel the need to take action. It should be noted that this philosophy basically only applies to Modern as the influx of new cards has a good chance of shaking up Standard. The issue here is that you aren't letting people figure things out for themselves. Non-rotating formats are great at rewarding deep knowledge of a singe deck and maneuvering specific card choices to beat what you are expecting. Three months is not enough time for those formats to have explored their large card pool for answers. The most recent Top 8 of a Modern Event had tons of different decks. People landed on a decent sideboard option to combat Treasure Cruise decks. It was a bonkers card and it might have needed banning in the end, but more time with it would have been worthwhile.
More problematic is the banning of Treasure Cruise in Legacy and its restriction in Vintage. This feels like they just wanted to end the debate about the card. The blurb in the ban announcement was barely two sentences on Treasure Cruise in Legacy and Vintage. Its essentially splash damage from the banning in Modern. Three months was barely enough to justify the banning in Modern, and nowhere close to long enough to make a correct decision for the true Eternal formats. The meta-game just doesn't move fast enough to make that kind of judgement. If talking about the magic online meta-game, than of course U/R Delver is going to swamp the queues, its super cheap to build compared to other options and it has a good game plan. It showed up in SCG opens for the same reasons but it didn't feel like it was dominating those tournaments either. Treasure Cruise was the first real shake up Vintage had seen in years, and it drove a lot of interest in Legacy. Maybe it was too good, but it certainly hadn't been through the ringer it needed to go through for a format with 20 years of history behind it.
I suppose the point I'm making is that it seems like Wizards of the Coast have stopped asking "How good is too good?" in relation to the ban list and have begun asking "How popular is too popular?" This sounds basically the same but there is a pretty big gulf between the two. How good something is not a question of how much of the field it makes up but how much a given deck wins based on how many people show up with it. Treasure Cruise and Birthing Pod had good win percentages but the larger problem was how much of the field was playing those decks. The were ubiquitous, and its that more than anything that got them axed. Large non-rotating formats are going to have ubiquitous decks though. People want to play something that they know will do well and not invest their money on an experimental deck. Without the threat of rotation the format will have moments of stagnation. Rather than letting the player base push through this issue on their own, WotC feels the need to shake the format up artificially through bans. This method, while effective, is going to cause rising feelings of frustration and uncertainty from players that are afraid of pricing themselves into a format that is almost guaranteed to have its best decks banned out to promote diversity in the name of a more exciting tournament to watch.
The specific bans that we just got for modern seem fairly legitimate. Treasure Cruise was totally busted and Dig Through Time and Birthing Pod had the ability to piece together combo decks. Pod has had a really solid run throughout Modern's existence. I don't think there's a deck with a better pedigree. LSV, arguably Pod's best player, agreed that Pod has had it coming. My argument is not with these cards but rather the way that the banned list is being used to shape Modern.
Its come up many times how ridiculous the Modern banned list is, but to understand it we have to look into the goals that Wizards has for the format. Aaron Forsythe talked about the order they want new players to get into the various formats of Magic. It went Duels of the Planeswalkers > Sealed > Draft > Standard > Modern > Legacy. Vintage basically doesn't exist in paper form in any meaningful way. We can see that they have Modern somewhere between Legacy and Standard. Legacy and Standard are completely different formats, and trying to find a middle ground is difficult. Modern was created with the best of intentions, but it has several challenges that WotC did not anticipate. Specifically, having a large non-rotating format lends itself to stagnation for long periods of time. Legacy is a great example. You would think with such a huge number of available cards that people would be innovating whole new archetypes all the time. That just doesn't happen, even with there being something worth winning, Legacy doesn't turn over constantly. People establish solid decks and attempt to master them rather than constantly shifting around. There are new archetypes that show up in Legacy or radical reinventions of existing decks, but that isn't the norm. Standard, more than any other format, rewards experimentation and innovation. You have much smaller card pools, so finding something that attacks the status quo is more meaningful, and easier since Standard gets a significant number of new cards with each set that's printed. The same number of cards is almost meaningless in Eternal formats since so many of them can't compete with the best of the best.
That is the essential problem with Modern. Modern is an Eternal format. Its card pool doesn't reach back all the way to the game's start, but it doesn't rotate. Established decks are much easier to pick up and master rather than to constantly be on the look out for the "next thing." Innovation is certainly possible but many options are going to be crowded out by their superior cousins. Modern is much closer to Legacy than it is to Standard, except there is no Force of Will to hold the combo decks down. This means that WotC has had to take a much larger hand in the format than it has in formats in the past.
They have stated that they don't want combo to be consistently faster than turn four. They also have stated that they want to promote diversity. Their bans have become less about stopping mistakes like Skullclamp from running wild and more about trying to shape the format into a version that is more like Standard. They want to encourage diversity to the point where they are banning cards to disable decks. They did the same thing with Deathrite Shaman and Bloodbraid Elf. There are cards that they have never allowed to be legal like Jace the Mind Sculptor or Ancestral Visions. They are over banning cards to try to promote diversity rather than unbanning cards that would be great checks on the format. Even from the cards above Deathrite Shaman would have been an outstanding unban in the face of Delve and Pod. Both of those strategies rely on the Graveyard, but its like they are so afraid of admitting that any card that goes on the banned list was a mistake to put there that they can't take it off. They have to make up their minds. Either the banned list is a living document where cards come off and on based on the needs of the format, or the cards placed on the list are mistakes that only get banned under the direst of circumstances.
Using the banned list for Modern the way they are also undermines people's desire to commit to the format. Birthing Pod in particular feels pretty egregious for this reason. Pod has been near the top of the Modern food chain for a long time. Years in fact. Its won the most tournaments and a copy of it is almost always in the top eight. Banning it now, when so many people have committed their limited Magic budgets to playing it just feels like a slap in the face. It might have been a necessity, I don't have as much information as they do, but the fact that they are banning cards so frequently in Modern is testing people's patience. It would be like practicing Ryu for a Street Fighter tournament. Pouring your 4-6 hours a week that you have free, learning him and his match ups, and then a month or so out from the event that you've been practicing for Capcom says that Ryu is too ubiquitous and can't be played in tournaments anymore. You might just quit playing Street Fighter altogether than invest another 40-50 hours into learning another character. Take into account that Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were only legal for three months, a pittance of time in Eternal Formats, and people's anger over the bannings become even more understandable.
The question is, why are they going through so many hoops to try and promote diversity? I think the answer is because of the increase in the importance of coverage. Wizards has realized that the Pro Tour and Grand Prix coverage is great advertising in addition to the pinnacle of play. If the coverage is just going to be the same three decks for the Pro Tour they feel the need to take action. It should be noted that this philosophy basically only applies to Modern as the influx of new cards has a good chance of shaking up Standard. The issue here is that you aren't letting people figure things out for themselves. Non-rotating formats are great at rewarding deep knowledge of a singe deck and maneuvering specific card choices to beat what you are expecting. Three months is not enough time for those formats to have explored their large card pool for answers. The most recent Top 8 of a Modern Event had tons of different decks. People landed on a decent sideboard option to combat Treasure Cruise decks. It was a bonkers card and it might have needed banning in the end, but more time with it would have been worthwhile.
More problematic is the banning of Treasure Cruise in Legacy and its restriction in Vintage. This feels like they just wanted to end the debate about the card. The blurb in the ban announcement was barely two sentences on Treasure Cruise in Legacy and Vintage. Its essentially splash damage from the banning in Modern. Three months was barely enough to justify the banning in Modern, and nowhere close to long enough to make a correct decision for the true Eternal formats. The meta-game just doesn't move fast enough to make that kind of judgement. If talking about the magic online meta-game, than of course U/R Delver is going to swamp the queues, its super cheap to build compared to other options and it has a good game plan. It showed up in SCG opens for the same reasons but it didn't feel like it was dominating those tournaments either. Treasure Cruise was the first real shake up Vintage had seen in years, and it drove a lot of interest in Legacy. Maybe it was too good, but it certainly hadn't been through the ringer it needed to go through for a format with 20 years of history behind it.
I suppose the point I'm making is that it seems like Wizards of the Coast have stopped asking "How good is too good?" in relation to the ban list and have begun asking "How popular is too popular?" This sounds basically the same but there is a pretty big gulf between the two. How good something is not a question of how much of the field it makes up but how much a given deck wins based on how many people show up with it. Treasure Cruise and Birthing Pod had good win percentages but the larger problem was how much of the field was playing those decks. The were ubiquitous, and its that more than anything that got them axed. Large non-rotating formats are going to have ubiquitous decks though. People want to play something that they know will do well and not invest their money on an experimental deck. Without the threat of rotation the format will have moments of stagnation. Rather than letting the player base push through this issue on their own, WotC feels the need to shake the format up artificially through bans. This method, while effective, is going to cause rising feelings of frustration and uncertainty from players that are afraid of pricing themselves into a format that is almost guaranteed to have its best decks banned out to promote diversity in the name of a more exciting tournament to watch.
Friday, January 16, 2015
First Build of the Week: Atarka
In case it wasn't obvious by now, I have an enduring love for the EDH format. One of my favorite things to do is to build a deck. So, I'm going to do that once a week. There are plenty of people out there showing how to build EDH on a budget, so I'm going to do the opposite and assume that budget isn't a concern for the deck. If budget is a concern for you, just swap out the pieces that are too expensive for something of similar function and you'll likely be fine.
We have a new set coming out with 10 new legends. There's some good room to explore them, but I was immediately drawn to Atarka, World Render. The art of this card is so cool. She looks like a Kaiju ready to rumble. While she doesn't do anything to defend herself, she ends the game really fast. Atarka screams to be played as a giant monster deck. That gives us some pretty clear direction off the bat, tons of ramp, lots of big dragons. Red has the highest concentration of dragons so we have plenty to choose from. We certainly will have some subtlety to the deck by the end, but R/G are really good mana colors as green loves land and red loves artifact mana. My initial brush of mana ramp always includes:
-Ancient Tomb
-Sol Ring
-Mana Crypt
-Grim Monolith
-Gilded Lotus
-Thran Dynamo
-Mana Vault
-Worn Powerstone
Those are good all rounded accelerators. We might want to change things up depending on how the deck shapes up. On to the land based ramp:
-Kodama's Reach
-Cultivate
-Explosive Vegetation
-Skyshroud Claim
-Hunting Wilds
-Nature's Lore
-Sakura-Tribe Elder
That gives us a solid base of acceleration and we can alter it later as we flush out the deck. Its certainly telling us that green is going to be more important early than red mana. I also want bulk land fetch, hence the three four mana doubles that jump from 4 to 6.
An important principle in deck building is that you never want to be a worse version of something else. Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund is basically the same deck as what we are talking about here. How do we differentiate ourselves from the Tyrant? Well the answer lies in the mana. Since we are only two colors, that means that we can focus on colorless ramp, which makes us likely to cast our general a turn or maybe two turns before a Karrthus player would be able to cast theirs. Combine this with the fact that Atarka naturally kills in two hits instead of three and our advantage over Karrthus becomes clear. Atarka is both faster and more consistent, but we lose out on some of the powerful black cards.
What dragons mesh with the plan of lots of mana?
At a glance:
-Balefire Dragon 8
-Bogardan Hellkite 7
-Flameblast Dragon 6
-Hellkite Charger 7
-Hellkite Igniter 7
-Hellkite Tyrant 6
-Hoardsmelter Dragon 6
-Dragon Mage 7
-Knollspine Dragon 7
-Mana Charged Dragon 6
-Moltensteel Dragon 6/4
-Mordant Dragon 6
-Preyseizer Dragon 6
-Ryusei, the Falling Star 6
-Scourge of Kher Ridges 8
-Scourge of the Throne 6
-Scourge of Valkas 5
-Spawn of Thraxes 7
-Thundermaw Hellkite 5
-Tyrant's Familiar 7
- Utvara Hellkite 8
That's quite a list! We should be weighing the 6 mana dragons higher than the 7+ mana dragons since our 7 mana play is already decided, and assuming a linear mana progression, a six mana play is going to attack the turn we play Atarka. Of specific notice are Mana-Charged Dragon and Scourge of the Throne, who don't need you to pay more mana into them, but who get crazy gains from Double Strike.
Ok, so now we have a selection of crazy beaters, lots of acceleration but nothing to do between one and six mana. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is making our Dragons better since we plan on investing so much mana into them. Haste is such a good keyword for large mana creatures. As are hexproof and shroud. In goes both Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots. Baking haste into our mana base sounds great so in go Hall of the Bandit Lord and Flamekin Village. Tapped lands slow us down a bit, but we should have the time to play these, and they speed us up by a turn, particularly Hall which is one of the best lands in the format. Fires of Yavimaya is old but gold, and its new counterpart Hammer of Purphorous gives us some amazing longevity. Generator Servant can give us some hasty beats much earlier than expected. Xenagos, God of Revels fits perfectly into the 5 slot before we cast one of our marquee dragons, and its not impossible for him to turn into a creature with the number of mana symbols that tend to be in a dragon's mana cost.
A word about planeswalkers. This seems like a deck that would want some of the walkers available to it, but really you have to judge walkers by the 1 activation rule. You have to assume that your walker only gets to activate one time. Not a lot of the walkers mesh with the deck's purpose and are useful in one activation. The ones that might be viable are Garrurk Wildspeaker, Garruk Caller of Beasts, Garruk Primal Hunter, and Domri Rade. The Garruks all have various uses from ramp to card draw and Domri functions as removal as well as potentially drawing cards. Primal Hunter is triple green, which could be annoying and one use puts him as a five mana sorcery that probably over-draws your hand. Caller of Beasts basically exists purely for his first ability, which while great isn't worth six mana. I like Domri and Wildspeaker though, so in they go. I'd be ready to cut both of them based on performance though.
We have several ways to accelerate out our dragons, but what about ways that cheat dragons into play? Especially if they get haste out of the deal. So, Sneak Attack goes in. Quicksilver Amulet is a close cousin to Sneak Attack and gets a slot as well.
Dragons don't need a lot of help to be lethal, but they also won't object to it. One of my favorite equipment for this sort of thing is Mage Slayer. You get to skip the whole blocking thing altogether! Other powerful buffs include Loxodon Warhammer, Berzerk, Fatal Frenzy, Surge of Strength, Stonewood Invocation, Seize the Day, Grafted Exoskeleton, Basilisk Collar, and Kessig Wolf Run. Each of these range from huge damage buffs to gaining useful abilities. Lifelink in particular is crazy when attached to Balefire Dragon or the like.
Lets take stock so far:
Ancient Tomb
Sol Ring
Mana Crypt
Grim Monolith
Gilded Lotus
Thran Dynamo
Mana Vault
Worn Powerstone
Kodama's Reach
Cultivate
Explosive Vegetation
Skyshroud Claim
Hunting Wilds
Nature's Lore
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Balefire Dragon
Bogardan Hellkite
Flameblast Dragon
Hellkite Charger
Hellkite Igniter
Hellkite Tyrant
Hoardsmelter Dragon
Dragon Mage
Knollspine Dragon
Mana Charged Dragon
Moltensteel Dragon
Mordant Dragon
Preyseizer Dragon
Ryusei, the Falling Star
Scourge of Kher Ridges
Scourge of the Throne
Scourge of Valkas
Spawn of Thraxes
Thundermaw Hellkite
Tyrant's Familiar
Utvara Hellkite
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Flamekin Village
Fires of Yavimaya
Hammer of Purphorous
Generator Servant
Xenagos
Domri Rade
Garrurk Wildspeaker
Sneak Attack
Quicksilver Amulet
Mage Slayer
Loxodon Warhammer
Berzerk
Fatal Frenzy
Surge of Strength
Stonewood Invocation
Seize the Day
Grafted Exoskeleton
Basilisk Collar
Kessig Wolf Run
That's 58 cards, of which 4 are lands. We are going to want more than the average number of lands for this deck. Normal land count is 37. Given that our general costs seven and our average threat costs about the same, and we are going to want significantly more land than usual. I want to try 41. That gives us 54 plus 41 = 95 out of our 99. EDH decks fill up quickly. To make room for some utility, removal, and draw effects we are going to have to make some cuts. That's a lot of dragons and they are responsible for making our curve so high. Scourge of Valkas is really color dense in the wrong color at the wrong time. I also don't anticipate having that many dragons at any given time. Preyseizer Dragon is cool, but I don't expect to have that much food for him. Dragon Mage, wheeling isn't great when you have so many high cost cards since you can likely only play 1-2 of them in a turn. Spawn of Thraxes isn't likely to get the job done as I am not a base red deck. Hellkite Igniter can be a nasty surprise, but we likely would rather be investing mana elsewhere by the time we get to that point in the game. I could be wrong and another dragon can under-perform, and Igniter is first in line as a back up. That frees up five slots. I think removing some redundancy from the pump spells also does us some good, so out come Fatal Frenzy and Basilisk Collar. That gives us 95-7=88 cards, or 11 free slots.
This number of lands wants some support in and of itself. So we go to the landfall cards to make use of the bulk of lands. While looking through the landfall cards, it strikes me that Khalni Heart Expedition is just better than Nature's Lore for us. We don't particularly care about fixing, we really just need bulk. The other landfall cards we can use are Lotus Cobra and Seer's Sundial. Other cards that support our minor lands theme are Titania, Protector of Argoth, Crucible of Worlds, and Scapeshift. Scapeshift works well in conjunction with Titania, Crucible, and the landfall cards, as does Life From The Loam. Aggressive Mining is scary since we do want our mana to stay in play, but it does offer more potential cards. I'd like to start with it but its pretty specific, so we'll wait. That's 88 + 6 = 94. The other five slots are swings, but for me I never run this sort of deck without Sylvan Library and Greater Good, 96. I want to include Chromatic Lantern for the late game since Firebreathing is so potent with double strike, 97. We haven't included really anyway to deal with permanents since removing players does such a good job of that already, but including two of the best answers will do us some good. In go Beast Within and Chaos Warp, 99.
Our lands are going to be a big weird since we need green early, and then transition into basically all red mana. I ripped the ratio straight out of R/G Titan decks of the past. So of our 41 lands, 20 should produce green, 25 should produce red and whatever is left over can be utility.
So the duels make easy includes
Wooded Foothills
Taiga
Stomping Ground
Rootbound Crag
Grove of the Burn Willows
City of Brass
Command Tower
Copperline Gorge
Fire-lit Thicket
Gruul Turf
Karplusion Forest
Mana Confluence
Mossfire Valley
Raging Ravine
Reflecting Pool
Temple of Abandon
This gives us 16 red and 16 green sources. Some of the mana is slow, but it gives us some great consisency. We are going to want a significant number of fetches given our Cradle, Loam, and Titania.
In go:
Teramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
Windswept Heath
Bloodstained Mire
Going to leave it at that for now, but I can see more off-color fetches in the future.
So that's 20 of our 41. Next go in colored utility lands and basics to fill out our color requirements.
Green:
Tranquil Thicket
Mosswort Bridge
Centaur Garden
Okina
2 Forest
Red:
Flamekin Village
Spinerock Knoll
Forgotten Cave
Shinka
3 Mountains
That's 33/41
Now we put in our colorless lands
Ancient Tomb
Crystal Vein
Kessig Wolf Run
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Homeward Path
Inkmoth Nexus
Rogue's Passage
Petrified Field
That gives us an initial decklist of :
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/10-03-15-bHS-atarka/
This list isn't perfect but I think its a decent first draft. There's probably too many dragons and I think too many of the lands enter tapped to be as fast as I really want to be. We also don't have any tutors for consistency. That is helped by how often we want to cast our general. There are plenty of directions to go from here. If you want to go for more of a R/G Tron feel, you could add in Eldrazi, Karn, Ugin, and more colorless mana. If you wanted to shift more into a 1v1 mode you could cut a bunch of dragons, add in more haste and planeswalkers and tighten up the lands. If you like the lands theme you could switch to Borborygmos Enraged. Kidding, Atarka likely does fine in that shell since she kills so fast. My first revision would probably be to cut some dragons for answers and tutors. I don't know which dragons aren't going to work, and I don't know what answers I'll need or what cards I want to tutor for. I always start more threat dense and peel back as I find out the things that really need to be stopped.
I hope you enjoyed it and I'll be back next week with another build!
Edit:
After some conversing, there are some pretty easy switches that don't alter the direction of the deck that we can make. Even though we want to play lots of dragons, 16 dragons is a lot. So we can shave three without too much of an issue.
OUT:
Hoardsmelter Dragon, Mordant Dragon, Utvara Hellkite.
Hoardsmelter is a good man, and I debated between him and Moltensteel Dragon, but ultimately Moltensteel can swing for more damage with his Phyrexian mana firebreathing. Mordant is redundant with other dragons effects, and Utvara Hellkite just feels so win more.
What else might not work out the way we want to?
Well even with the land subtheme, 41 is quite a lot of land. I agreeded that Copperline Gorge isn't worth the trouble at this point so
OUT:
Copperline Gorge
That gives us four slots.
IN:
Urabrask, Blazing Shoal, Outpost Siege, and Gamble
Urabrask is a great haste enabler that removes a lot of tricks people can use to make blockers.
Blazing Shoal is a free spell that can instantly kill people with a 6+ pitch.
Outpost Siege gives us a free card every turn. We won't often choose the ping ability so maybe Chandra would be a better option, but Siege is harder to get rid of.
Gamble is great when in a deck with Life from the Loam. It gives us a decent tutor.
We have a new set coming out with 10 new legends. There's some good room to explore them, but I was immediately drawn to Atarka, World Render. The art of this card is so cool. She looks like a Kaiju ready to rumble. While she doesn't do anything to defend herself, she ends the game really fast. Atarka screams to be played as a giant monster deck. That gives us some pretty clear direction off the bat, tons of ramp, lots of big dragons. Red has the highest concentration of dragons so we have plenty to choose from. We certainly will have some subtlety to the deck by the end, but R/G are really good mana colors as green loves land and red loves artifact mana. My initial brush of mana ramp always includes:
-Ancient Tomb
-Sol Ring
-Mana Crypt
-Grim Monolith
-Gilded Lotus
-Thran Dynamo
-Mana Vault
-Worn Powerstone
Those are good all rounded accelerators. We might want to change things up depending on how the deck shapes up. On to the land based ramp:
-Kodama's Reach
-Cultivate
-Explosive Vegetation
-Skyshroud Claim
-Hunting Wilds
-Nature's Lore
-Sakura-Tribe Elder
That gives us a solid base of acceleration and we can alter it later as we flush out the deck. Its certainly telling us that green is going to be more important early than red mana. I also want bulk land fetch, hence the three four mana doubles that jump from 4 to 6.
An important principle in deck building is that you never want to be a worse version of something else. Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund is basically the same deck as what we are talking about here. How do we differentiate ourselves from the Tyrant? Well the answer lies in the mana. Since we are only two colors, that means that we can focus on colorless ramp, which makes us likely to cast our general a turn or maybe two turns before a Karrthus player would be able to cast theirs. Combine this with the fact that Atarka naturally kills in two hits instead of three and our advantage over Karrthus becomes clear. Atarka is both faster and more consistent, but we lose out on some of the powerful black cards.
What dragons mesh with the plan of lots of mana?
At a glance:
-Balefire Dragon 8
-Bogardan Hellkite 7
-Flameblast Dragon 6
-Hellkite Charger 7
-Hellkite Igniter 7
-Hellkite Tyrant 6
-Hoardsmelter Dragon 6
-Dragon Mage 7
-Knollspine Dragon 7
-Mana Charged Dragon 6
-Moltensteel Dragon 6/4
-Mordant Dragon 6
-Preyseizer Dragon 6
-Ryusei, the Falling Star 6
-Scourge of Kher Ridges 8
-Scourge of the Throne 6
-Scourge of Valkas 5
-Spawn of Thraxes 7
-Thundermaw Hellkite 5
-Tyrant's Familiar 7
- Utvara Hellkite 8
That's quite a list! We should be weighing the 6 mana dragons higher than the 7+ mana dragons since our 7 mana play is already decided, and assuming a linear mana progression, a six mana play is going to attack the turn we play Atarka. Of specific notice are Mana-Charged Dragon and Scourge of the Throne, who don't need you to pay more mana into them, but who get crazy gains from Double Strike.
Ok, so now we have a selection of crazy beaters, lots of acceleration but nothing to do between one and six mana. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is making our Dragons better since we plan on investing so much mana into them. Haste is such a good keyword for large mana creatures. As are hexproof and shroud. In goes both Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots. Baking haste into our mana base sounds great so in go Hall of the Bandit Lord and Flamekin Village. Tapped lands slow us down a bit, but we should have the time to play these, and they speed us up by a turn, particularly Hall which is one of the best lands in the format. Fires of Yavimaya is old but gold, and its new counterpart Hammer of Purphorous gives us some amazing longevity. Generator Servant can give us some hasty beats much earlier than expected. Xenagos, God of Revels fits perfectly into the 5 slot before we cast one of our marquee dragons, and its not impossible for him to turn into a creature with the number of mana symbols that tend to be in a dragon's mana cost.
A word about planeswalkers. This seems like a deck that would want some of the walkers available to it, but really you have to judge walkers by the 1 activation rule. You have to assume that your walker only gets to activate one time. Not a lot of the walkers mesh with the deck's purpose and are useful in one activation. The ones that might be viable are Garrurk Wildspeaker, Garruk Caller of Beasts, Garruk Primal Hunter, and Domri Rade. The Garruks all have various uses from ramp to card draw and Domri functions as removal as well as potentially drawing cards. Primal Hunter is triple green, which could be annoying and one use puts him as a five mana sorcery that probably over-draws your hand. Caller of Beasts basically exists purely for his first ability, which while great isn't worth six mana. I like Domri and Wildspeaker though, so in they go. I'd be ready to cut both of them based on performance though.
We have several ways to accelerate out our dragons, but what about ways that cheat dragons into play? Especially if they get haste out of the deal. So, Sneak Attack goes in. Quicksilver Amulet is a close cousin to Sneak Attack and gets a slot as well.
Dragons don't need a lot of help to be lethal, but they also won't object to it. One of my favorite equipment for this sort of thing is Mage Slayer. You get to skip the whole blocking thing altogether! Other powerful buffs include Loxodon Warhammer, Berzerk, Fatal Frenzy, Surge of Strength, Stonewood Invocation, Seize the Day, Grafted Exoskeleton, Basilisk Collar, and Kessig Wolf Run. Each of these range from huge damage buffs to gaining useful abilities. Lifelink in particular is crazy when attached to Balefire Dragon or the like.
Lets take stock so far:
Ancient Tomb
Sol Ring
Mana Crypt
Grim Monolith
Gilded Lotus
Thran Dynamo
Mana Vault
Worn Powerstone
Kodama's Reach
Cultivate
Explosive Vegetation
Skyshroud Claim
Hunting Wilds
Nature's Lore
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Balefire Dragon
Bogardan Hellkite
Flameblast Dragon
Hellkite Charger
Hellkite Igniter
Hellkite Tyrant
Hoardsmelter Dragon
Dragon Mage
Knollspine Dragon
Mana Charged Dragon
Moltensteel Dragon
Mordant Dragon
Preyseizer Dragon
Ryusei, the Falling Star
Scourge of Kher Ridges
Scourge of the Throne
Scourge of Valkas
Spawn of Thraxes
Thundermaw Hellkite
Tyrant's Familiar
Utvara Hellkite
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Flamekin Village
Fires of Yavimaya
Hammer of Purphorous
Generator Servant
Xenagos
Domri Rade
Garrurk Wildspeaker
Sneak Attack
Quicksilver Amulet
Mage Slayer
Loxodon Warhammer
Berzerk
Fatal Frenzy
Surge of Strength
Stonewood Invocation
Seize the Day
Grafted Exoskeleton
Basilisk Collar
Kessig Wolf Run
That's 58 cards, of which 4 are lands. We are going to want more than the average number of lands for this deck. Normal land count is 37. Given that our general costs seven and our average threat costs about the same, and we are going to want significantly more land than usual. I want to try 41. That gives us 54 plus 41 = 95 out of our 99. EDH decks fill up quickly. To make room for some utility, removal, and draw effects we are going to have to make some cuts. That's a lot of dragons and they are responsible for making our curve so high. Scourge of Valkas is really color dense in the wrong color at the wrong time. I also don't anticipate having that many dragons at any given time. Preyseizer Dragon is cool, but I don't expect to have that much food for him. Dragon Mage, wheeling isn't great when you have so many high cost cards since you can likely only play 1-2 of them in a turn. Spawn of Thraxes isn't likely to get the job done as I am not a base red deck. Hellkite Igniter can be a nasty surprise, but we likely would rather be investing mana elsewhere by the time we get to that point in the game. I could be wrong and another dragon can under-perform, and Igniter is first in line as a back up. That frees up five slots. I think removing some redundancy from the pump spells also does us some good, so out come Fatal Frenzy and Basilisk Collar. That gives us 95-7=88 cards, or 11 free slots.
This number of lands wants some support in and of itself. So we go to the landfall cards to make use of the bulk of lands. While looking through the landfall cards, it strikes me that Khalni Heart Expedition is just better than Nature's Lore for us. We don't particularly care about fixing, we really just need bulk. The other landfall cards we can use are Lotus Cobra and Seer's Sundial. Other cards that support our minor lands theme are Titania, Protector of Argoth, Crucible of Worlds, and Scapeshift. Scapeshift works well in conjunction with Titania, Crucible, and the landfall cards, as does Life From The Loam. Aggressive Mining is scary since we do want our mana to stay in play, but it does offer more potential cards. I'd like to start with it but its pretty specific, so we'll wait. That's 88 + 6 = 94. The other five slots are swings, but for me I never run this sort of deck without Sylvan Library and Greater Good, 96. I want to include Chromatic Lantern for the late game since Firebreathing is so potent with double strike, 97. We haven't included really anyway to deal with permanents since removing players does such a good job of that already, but including two of the best answers will do us some good. In go Beast Within and Chaos Warp, 99.
Our lands are going to be a big weird since we need green early, and then transition into basically all red mana. I ripped the ratio straight out of R/G Titan decks of the past. So of our 41 lands, 20 should produce green, 25 should produce red and whatever is left over can be utility.
So the duels make easy includes
Wooded Foothills
Taiga
Stomping Ground
Rootbound Crag
Grove of the Burn Willows
City of Brass
Command Tower
Copperline Gorge
Fire-lit Thicket
Gruul Turf
Karplusion Forest
Mana Confluence
Mossfire Valley
Raging Ravine
Reflecting Pool
Temple of Abandon
This gives us 16 red and 16 green sources. Some of the mana is slow, but it gives us some great consisency. We are going to want a significant number of fetches given our Cradle, Loam, and Titania.
In go:
Teramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
Windswept Heath
Bloodstained Mire
Going to leave it at that for now, but I can see more off-color fetches in the future.
So that's 20 of our 41. Next go in colored utility lands and basics to fill out our color requirements.
Green:
Tranquil Thicket
Mosswort Bridge
Centaur Garden
Okina
2 Forest
Red:
Flamekin Village
Spinerock Knoll
Forgotten Cave
Shinka
3 Mountains
That's 33/41
Now we put in our colorless lands
Ancient Tomb
Crystal Vein
Kessig Wolf Run
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Homeward Path
Inkmoth Nexus
Rogue's Passage
Petrified Field
That gives us an initial decklist of :
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/10-03-15-bHS-atarka/
This list isn't perfect but I think its a decent first draft. There's probably too many dragons and I think too many of the lands enter tapped to be as fast as I really want to be. We also don't have any tutors for consistency. That is helped by how often we want to cast our general. There are plenty of directions to go from here. If you want to go for more of a R/G Tron feel, you could add in Eldrazi, Karn, Ugin, and more colorless mana. If you wanted to shift more into a 1v1 mode you could cut a bunch of dragons, add in more haste and planeswalkers and tighten up the lands. If you like the lands theme you could switch to Borborygmos Enraged. Kidding, Atarka likely does fine in that shell since she kills so fast. My first revision would probably be to cut some dragons for answers and tutors. I don't know which dragons aren't going to work, and I don't know what answers I'll need or what cards I want to tutor for. I always start more threat dense and peel back as I find out the things that really need to be stopped.
I hope you enjoyed it and I'll be back next week with another build!
Edit:
After some conversing, there are some pretty easy switches that don't alter the direction of the deck that we can make. Even though we want to play lots of dragons, 16 dragons is a lot. So we can shave three without too much of an issue.
OUT:
Hoardsmelter Dragon, Mordant Dragon, Utvara Hellkite.
Hoardsmelter is a good man, and I debated between him and Moltensteel Dragon, but ultimately Moltensteel can swing for more damage with his Phyrexian mana firebreathing. Mordant is redundant with other dragons effects, and Utvara Hellkite just feels so win more.
What else might not work out the way we want to?
Well even with the land subtheme, 41 is quite a lot of land. I agreeded that Copperline Gorge isn't worth the trouble at this point so
OUT:
Copperline Gorge
That gives us four slots.
IN:
Urabrask, Blazing Shoal, Outpost Siege, and Gamble
Urabrask is a great haste enabler that removes a lot of tricks people can use to make blockers.
Blazing Shoal is a free spell that can instantly kill people with a 6+ pitch.
Outpost Siege gives us a free card every turn. We won't often choose the ping ability so maybe Chandra would be a better option, but Siege is harder to get rid of.
Gamble is great when in a deck with Life from the Loam. It gives us a decent tutor.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Inclusive versus Exclusive games
This line of thinking came about after my comparison of Path of Exile to Magic the Gathering. I realized why I found the games so similar, and why they tend to have more depth than games like Hearthstone or Diablo 3. Its because they take extraordinary pains not to exclude options from the player. So, first point of order is what is the definition of Exclusive and Inclusive?
Exclusive - A game that removes options from the player based on some initial choice.
Inclusive - A game that doesn't remove options from the player but supports options with escalating costs.
That's a bit simplistic, so some examples are in order. I've already stated that I believe Magic and POE to be inclusive games. Lets look at Magic first. Don't you have to pick your colors before playing a game of magic? No actually. You are perfectly free in deck building to put anything you want in your deck. Its up to you to figure out how to cast the cards you choose to play. The best example of this is the Legacy deck Sneak and Show. The title of the deck refers to two cards, Sneak Attack and Show and Tell. Not only do these decks cheat into play things that cost more mana than you have access to, they also cheat into play cards that are outside your mana colors.A popular strategy against Sneak and Show for a long time was to board in Angel of Despair. This gave you an out if they played Show and Tell. This type of scenario is unusual, but is totally possible because the limits of what you can play in Magic are defined by what you can pay for. If you don't ever play against Sneak and Show you lost your sideboard slots. If you board it in and they don't play Show and Tell then you have dead cards. There is a cost to using this option.
The contrast here is Hearthstone. In Hearthstone you can't play anything outside your Class. If you were in the situation where the equivalent of Angel of Despair, something that normally you couldn't cast but would be perfect in a specific situation then you would be shit out of luck.This is because in Hearthstone what you can play is defined by the designer of the game instead of the deckbuilding cost of including cards that are hard to play. In short, in Magic you can play anything but covering it all could stretch you out till your deck is suboptimal. Blizzard made Hearthstone to exclude cards outside your "Color" both to simplfy the resource system and so people didn't trap themselves while building their decks.
That is the essential tension between Inclusive and Exclusive games. Inclusive games give you significantly more options at the cost of being much harder to learn and become proficient in. Exclusive games tend to try to follow the mantra of "Easy to learn, difficult to Master." They are designed specifically to present a more streamlined experience with less clutter. The trade off being that with less available to the players the game loses some amount of the subtly that comes with truly masterful games.
The same holds true for POE and D3. POE requires you to plan what you want to do with your character before you start, but what you want to do with any given character is essentially infinite. Everything is held together by the cost associated with a build. The more complicated and difficult the build, the higher the cost will be in gearing, skills, mana, life, etc. And no one class is held to a specific set of skills. It may not be optimal or easy to build a Marauder as an Incinerate character, but it is within the set of possibilities the game allows. Holding that up against D3 and its not even close. D3 has skills tied to classes, gear has nowhere near the impact that it does for POE in terms of broadening a character's possible builds, and their crafting system doesn't even hold a candle to POE's ability to manipulate gear. Also, making D3 all self-found holds players back from trying experimental gear due to the rarity of the involved items.
It sounds like I'm arguing in favor of Inclusive games, but they have detractors as well. Inclusive games are much harsher on new players. The sheer amount of options and information you have to learn make for a significant barrier to entry. I played magic for two to three years before I could really follow along with coverage. It took another three years before I really got what games hinged on. That's a monstrous amount of time to be involved with something. I had fun the whole way, but not everyone has the time/interest/focus to stay with one game for a long period of time, especially when Exclusive games exist that streamline the action for you.
Exclusive games have the benefit of being able to pick up and play them. They are cool tightly packed experiences. Not everyone who plays games has hours and hours to pour into them. And by no means does being exclusive prelude having a rabid fanbase as Hearthstone has proven.
As before, neither choice is more correct in the grand scheme of things, but for a specific game its important to have your audience in mind. How are you making the game for? Do you want the experience to reward high time investment and complexity but shut out potential new players, or be engaging and have a low barrier to entry but not have the same level of mastery.
Exclusive - A game that removes options from the player based on some initial choice.
Inclusive - A game that doesn't remove options from the player but supports options with escalating costs.
That's a bit simplistic, so some examples are in order. I've already stated that I believe Magic and POE to be inclusive games. Lets look at Magic first. Don't you have to pick your colors before playing a game of magic? No actually. You are perfectly free in deck building to put anything you want in your deck. Its up to you to figure out how to cast the cards you choose to play. The best example of this is the Legacy deck Sneak and Show. The title of the deck refers to two cards, Sneak Attack and Show and Tell. Not only do these decks cheat into play things that cost more mana than you have access to, they also cheat into play cards that are outside your mana colors.A popular strategy against Sneak and Show for a long time was to board in Angel of Despair. This gave you an out if they played Show and Tell. This type of scenario is unusual, but is totally possible because the limits of what you can play in Magic are defined by what you can pay for. If you don't ever play against Sneak and Show you lost your sideboard slots. If you board it in and they don't play Show and Tell then you have dead cards. There is a cost to using this option.
The contrast here is Hearthstone. In Hearthstone you can't play anything outside your Class. If you were in the situation where the equivalent of Angel of Despair, something that normally you couldn't cast but would be perfect in a specific situation then you would be shit out of luck.This is because in Hearthstone what you can play is defined by the designer of the game instead of the deckbuilding cost of including cards that are hard to play. In short, in Magic you can play anything but covering it all could stretch you out till your deck is suboptimal. Blizzard made Hearthstone to exclude cards outside your "Color" both to simplfy the resource system and so people didn't trap themselves while building their decks.
That is the essential tension between Inclusive and Exclusive games. Inclusive games give you significantly more options at the cost of being much harder to learn and become proficient in. Exclusive games tend to try to follow the mantra of "Easy to learn, difficult to Master." They are designed specifically to present a more streamlined experience with less clutter. The trade off being that with less available to the players the game loses some amount of the subtly that comes with truly masterful games.
The same holds true for POE and D3. POE requires you to plan what you want to do with your character before you start, but what you want to do with any given character is essentially infinite. Everything is held together by the cost associated with a build. The more complicated and difficult the build, the higher the cost will be in gearing, skills, mana, life, etc. And no one class is held to a specific set of skills. It may not be optimal or easy to build a Marauder as an Incinerate character, but it is within the set of possibilities the game allows. Holding that up against D3 and its not even close. D3 has skills tied to classes, gear has nowhere near the impact that it does for POE in terms of broadening a character's possible builds, and their crafting system doesn't even hold a candle to POE's ability to manipulate gear. Also, making D3 all self-found holds players back from trying experimental gear due to the rarity of the involved items.
It sounds like I'm arguing in favor of Inclusive games, but they have detractors as well. Inclusive games are much harsher on new players. The sheer amount of options and information you have to learn make for a significant barrier to entry. I played magic for two to three years before I could really follow along with coverage. It took another three years before I really got what games hinged on. That's a monstrous amount of time to be involved with something. I had fun the whole way, but not everyone has the time/interest/focus to stay with one game for a long period of time, especially when Exclusive games exist that streamline the action for you.
Exclusive games have the benefit of being able to pick up and play them. They are cool tightly packed experiences. Not everyone who plays games has hours and hours to pour into them. And by no means does being exclusive prelude having a rabid fanbase as Hearthstone has proven.
As before, neither choice is more correct in the grand scheme of things, but for a specific game its important to have your audience in mind. How are you making the game for? Do you want the experience to reward high time investment and complexity but shut out potential new players, or be engaging and have a low barrier to entry but not have the same level of mastery.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
More on Complexity versus Clarity
A couple weeks ago, I had a post that asked the question is it worth spending the time on clarity at the cost of complexity and depth? Path of Exile was the example I used for a game that values complexity so much that it allows new players to reach a fail state for their characters. Grinding Gear Games, Path's publisher, assumes you have a base of knowledge, but what games can you learn from but that lose your interest?
I think that the opposite problem exists for some games. That they focus so much on clarity and getting new players into the game that they have solved-states. A solved-state is when you have nothing left to explore. If a game is shallow enough, then figuring out the optimal strategy is easy. Once people have figured out the best thing to be doing a game loses a lot of the mystery. You know the thing you should be doing. There are people that intentionally do something sub-optimal just to prove that they can, but that is rather abnormal. A solved state is as much a problem as a failed state. It makes your turn over very high. That works for a game that has some up-front cost, e.g. the traditional AAA releases, but more and more games aim to have a living model where content is developed continuously. It is vital to games to be able to retain their playerbase and solved states lead to less invested players, less interest, and a game's eventual death.
To keep the comparisons consistent, lets take Magic and Diablo 3. Both games spend a pretty inordinate amount of time walking new players through the early game. Diablo 3 has way more difficulty modes than it realistically needs, and the developers of Magic really want new players to play sealed before they do anything else. They both have solid mid-games with Diablo 3's gearing process and Magic's emphasis on Standard and then Modern for professional events. However Diablo 3's end game is notoriously weak. This is not to say its non-existent, its just not satisfying. Between Diablo 3 and Reaper of Souls there was virtually no end game, and while Reaper was a huge upgrade over vanilla D3, it still doesn't even remotely compare to Path of Exile or the depth of other titles. Magic manages to have an incredible complexity to it even after you graduate from the heavily played formats. Casual formats abound, and Legacy and Vintage are virtually unsolvable formats.
D3 has the solve-state problem. They don't have a great retention rate, and that's because once you get to the end game you get bored, and that's the issue with a lack of complexity. If a game isn't deep enough then it loses its top end to other game.They are trying to develop a continual progression system but honestly once you get to the higher levels of gameplay the game breaks down. There aren't enough things to explore and the Greater Rift system is virtually the only thing to do except trying to get a Hellfire Amulet that's worth a damn. The lack of trading also stunts the community since commerce is what invariably makes people come together.Path of Exile has been growing by leaps and bounds because its feeding on the players that have grown dissatisfied by the end game of D3.
Now does this make D3 a bad game? Fuck no. Its sold millions of copies. Its got excellent gameplay, and a very viceral appeal. Its just cool. Its model of having a tight experience that you can play and get to the "end game" only takes a moderate amount of play time that feels good the whole way. You never feel lost as you are playing through that game and you can't fail in the long term. A game doesn't have to last forever, being the one thing that eats up all of your time. I personally like games that are on the deep end, but D3 is a great Action RPG for people that just want to play a few hours here or there.
I think that the opposite problem exists for some games. That they focus so much on clarity and getting new players into the game that they have solved-states. A solved-state is when you have nothing left to explore. If a game is shallow enough, then figuring out the optimal strategy is easy. Once people have figured out the best thing to be doing a game loses a lot of the mystery. You know the thing you should be doing. There are people that intentionally do something sub-optimal just to prove that they can, but that is rather abnormal. A solved state is as much a problem as a failed state. It makes your turn over very high. That works for a game that has some up-front cost, e.g. the traditional AAA releases, but more and more games aim to have a living model where content is developed continuously. It is vital to games to be able to retain their playerbase and solved states lead to less invested players, less interest, and a game's eventual death.
To keep the comparisons consistent, lets take Magic and Diablo 3. Both games spend a pretty inordinate amount of time walking new players through the early game. Diablo 3 has way more difficulty modes than it realistically needs, and the developers of Magic really want new players to play sealed before they do anything else. They both have solid mid-games with Diablo 3's gearing process and Magic's emphasis on Standard and then Modern for professional events. However Diablo 3's end game is notoriously weak. This is not to say its non-existent, its just not satisfying. Between Diablo 3 and Reaper of Souls there was virtually no end game, and while Reaper was a huge upgrade over vanilla D3, it still doesn't even remotely compare to Path of Exile or the depth of other titles. Magic manages to have an incredible complexity to it even after you graduate from the heavily played formats. Casual formats abound, and Legacy and Vintage are virtually unsolvable formats.
D3 has the solve-state problem. They don't have a great retention rate, and that's because once you get to the end game you get bored, and that's the issue with a lack of complexity. If a game isn't deep enough then it loses its top end to other game.They are trying to develop a continual progression system but honestly once you get to the higher levels of gameplay the game breaks down. There aren't enough things to explore and the Greater Rift system is virtually the only thing to do except trying to get a Hellfire Amulet that's worth a damn. The lack of trading also stunts the community since commerce is what invariably makes people come together.Path of Exile has been growing by leaps and bounds because its feeding on the players that have grown dissatisfied by the end game of D3.
Now does this make D3 a bad game? Fuck no. Its sold millions of copies. Its got excellent gameplay, and a very viceral appeal. Its just cool. Its model of having a tight experience that you can play and get to the "end game" only takes a moderate amount of play time that feels good the whole way. You never feel lost as you are playing through that game and you can't fail in the long term. A game doesn't have to last forever, being the one thing that eats up all of your time. I personally like games that are on the deep end, but D3 is a great Action RPG for people that just want to play a few hours here or there.
Friday, January 9, 2015
The rest of the spoilers and some closing thoughts on the set.
First of all, I'm not going to talk about every card. I'd be here all night. If I don't mention something feel free to ask, but if I can't think of anything to say I'm just going to skip the card.
White:
Mastery of the Unseen-
This is a niffty little card. It is going to be expensive to use, but provides some nice advantage if you go through the hoops it sets up. Since it wants you to have lots of mana and lots of creatures it pairs really well with Gae's Cradle. Pairing with green also gives us access to Sylvan Library, which is powerful in conjunction with manifest already. Simply putting this with Rhys or an enchantress shell or something of that nature will pay off but I'm not too sure it would be worthwhile given you have to pay four to put it in play and then the creatures cost. You have to really want the life gain. The one place I can think of that this would be perfect for is Trostani. G/W, plays with lots of creatures, loves to gain life, plays with whole bunches of library manipulation.
Rally the Ancestors-
This is similar to Wake the Dead. There are several key differences though. The first is what your mana is buying you. With WtD you can pay 3 mana to pull up a 10 mana creature. On RtA you end up paying 2 more mana than the creature costs. So you would pay 12 mana to get that creature. However, you get everything that costs 10 or less mana, and you can cast RtA anytime you want, the thing stopping you from attacking with the creatures being an upkeep exile trigger. So you can keep the dudes around through a whole cycle of turns in EDH as blockers. That the card exiles itself and the creatures makes repeating the effect virtually impossible. Dodging the upkeep trigger through sacrifice and bounce lets you hold onto your dudes, and the timing on the trigger lets you have mana again before resolving the exile trigger. Also, if you manage to get some kind of global haste then you can use this to resurrect your graveyard and swing. The trade off being that you either need tons of mana or rather small creatures Altogether a good card that will see play in a variety of value based strategies.
Sage's Reverie-
This is just another good toy for aura voltron strategies. That said, its a very good card in those decks. It'll draw you 2-3 cards and be another +2-3 p/t.
Blue:
Frost Walker-
Why isn't this an illusion? Why does it look like an Eldrazi? Why does the flavor text talk about allies when it looks like the Frost Walker is about to straight up murder that dude?
Neutralizing Blast-
Most decks are going to have multicolor cards that you can hit with this. Its cheap and splash-able. I would rate this as playable if you have targets in mind that you want to hit with it. There are certainly enough 1U conditional counter spells that this is fighting for prominence so it won't see too much play, but don't overlook it.
Reality Shift-
This card just became my go-to removal in heavy blue decks. The odds that the manifest hits are really low, and then they still have to pay for the creature anyway. Reality Shift being an instant also makes it really flexible. It costs two mana so its easy to leave up for it, and there are no targeting restrictions. This is an answer to Eldrazi or other hard to deal with creatures. Marque blue removal, will get played everywhere.
Refocus-
I don't know what breaks this seemingly innocuous card, but something does, and its tremendous value in a Merieke Ri Berite, Dralnu, or other Tap ability focused deck.
Renowned Weaponsmith-
While I'm doubtful that his second ability is going to be used, tapping for multiple arifact mana could get this guy played in Sharuum, Esper Triplets, Teferi Planeswalker, or another artifact mana reliant deck. He's essentially a worse version of Chief Engineer. Still, decks like a certain density of effect and with the singleton nature of EDH additional printings of unique effects help with consistency.
Rite of Undoing-
This has potential to be good in a tempo oriented deck with lots of cantrips and spare permanents. I'm think of Rafiq-esque decks. It obviously pairs well with aggression and enter the battlefield effects.
Will of the Naga-
Another Delve card, this can wind up being very cheap and freeze effects are strong in EDH given how many turns happen between any one player's turn.
Black:
Dark Deal-
I have no idea what I'd do with this since it is about the opposite of all the wheel effects. Maybe it sees play in Nekusar? It is definitely the only thing that does what it does though.
Fearsome Awakening-
If you are in the market for a 5 mana zombify and have a bunch of dragons than this is a cool one.
Ghastly Conscription-
This is a big expensive effect that only promises you having to pay more mana to flip the creatures back over. Rise of the Dark Realms is only two mana more, steals all the creatures face up, and steals all the creatures. Even without a comparison point, I don't like this too much since you have to have the right color of mana to flip the creatures, meaning that the best target is pretty much always yourself. Targeting other players to strip out their graveyard is also likely not going to be useful since the creatures can all just die again. This seems cool but I don't like it all that much.
Grave Strength-
This has the potential to add a lot of power for very little investment. There's plenty of black decks that are based around the yard though, so this can even help enable some strategies.
Merciless Executioner-
Fleshbag Marauder reprint with a different name. Fleshbag has been a staple in EDH for years since it essentially reads each other player sacrifices a creature. I expect having access to two Fleshbags is going to come up a fair amount. Also, ORC TRIBAL.
Orc Sureshot-
This has some potential. Its like Noxius Ghoul, but instead of everything, its target creature. The trade off is that he triggers on everything, making him quite lethal in token strategies. At 4 mana he's a stretch, but he definitely can't stay on the board if your opponents have any desire to play with smallish creatures.
Qarsi High Priest-
I like this guy. He is repeatable Manifest and an instant speed sac outlet at a very small investment in mana.
Sibsig Muckdraggers-
This seems like a good deal, but to play it for 1 mana you essentially have to have 9 cards in your graveyard. It might be there's somewhere you want this but I have a dredge-based Mimeoplasm deck and even I think the price in cards is too steep.
Red:
Dragonrage-
This is a trap. It requires you to be attacking with four creatures to even generate mana. Decks that want to attack with that many dudes, or more, will get better use out of team wide effects. The firebreathing is interesting but not great. I don't see a home for this, unless you really want to Starstorm mid-combat.
Mob Rule-
This does a respectable Insurrection impression. Be prepared to get wrecked by this a few times just after the release and before it really gets on your radar.
Green:
Fruit of the First Tree-
Made for sacrifice/voltron decks as either value or insurance. Specifically, I like putting this in Uril as a way to draw tons of cards if you can't push through the enemy defenses.
Return to the Earth-
This is a really solid card that deals with tons of problems, as long as the enchantments and artifacts have flying.
Sudden Reclamation-
I love this card. I almost want to call it the green Fact or Fiction. Getting a creature, a land, and setting up you graveyard for more goodies is perfect. The four mana tag isn't too bad in the color of rampant growth. That it isn't limited to what you mill with it means you can essentially use it as a value raise dead at instant speed. Graveyard removal in response will stop you from getting back what you initially wanted, but provided you mill a land a creature you can still get full value.
I like this in a lot of places, like Borborigmos, Titania, Lots of Sultai decks, Jarad. Anywhere that you can reasonably expect the top four cards of your deck to have a land and a creature in it.
Temur Sabertooth-
Self-bouncing things is very strong. That you can do it as a non-tap ability for two mana makes it all the stronger. That by doing so makes this creature indestructible crosses the threshold into great territory. The 4 mana price tag to land him doesn't inspire confidence but I guarantee this guy becomes a real nuisance once he's on the battlefield. Anything with good etb effects will like him, but I think he takes on a whole new level of buillshit in Animar. He can easily go infinite in that deck with creatures that generate mana on entering the battlefield, and even without that, the value you'll generate and the number of counters you put on Animar will seal the game pretty fast.
Multicolor:
Tasigur the Golden Fang-
This guy is pretty awesome. He provides card advantage at a reasonable cost considering that its repeatable. As a general he gets to always cost one if you have the two extra cards to delve away each time he dies. He's limited in the decks he can go in, but most Sultai lists are going to appreciate a cheap body and filling the graveyard. He is obviously mana hungry, so putting him in Sidisi with Cradle seems like a solid way to grow cards in hand and tokens on the table which translates into more tokens and more cards. I like this guy quite a bit.
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death-
This is one of the cards that I really wish the hybrid rules didn't pertain to. She would be an awesome R/W general, and I suppose you can play her that way, but she would also be great in R/W or R/B aggressive decks. I think the best card to nab with her right now is Karmic Guide since you can keep looping the Guide for crazy value. R/W really needs more low to the ground aggressive value cards to step up to the other colors. We are getting there as WotC keeps shuffling the effects and power of cards. The problem with that is that Red has been great in Standard and Extended/Modern basically forever, so they are trying really hard to find things that they can do for older formats. I would say that they've been pretty successful, but its still an uphill battle for EDH.
Her trigger is pretty demanding on your mana in an aggressive deck, and you'll need a whispersilk cloak on her eventually since you need to be attacking, but I do really like the direction of the card and the strategy it wants you to play.
Warden of the First Tree-
This guy is obviously supposed to be aping Figure of Destiny. I think he's an order of magnitude worse for EDH as it is an Abzan only card. If you could put him in G/W or G/B there might be some call for him but I can't imagine wanting to pour that much mana into a card that doesn't immediately win the game. To be fair, if you get to activate his third ability in actual magic you probably do just win the game.
Atarka, World Render-
The art is amazing. She feels like a Kaiju. If you want to basically do what Karrthus does, but with easier mana. Also, things like Berzerk or Wolf Run deal double damage, but she naturally has trample so something like Might of Oaks is often fatal on its own. The double strike for all your dragons is also super scary and letting your defenses down when she's ready to go full on beast mode will likely get you killed in a hurry. She also works well slotting into two of the most popular Jund decks, Karrthus and Prossh. I expect to be seeing this Kaiju pretty frequently.
Ojutai, Soul of Winter-
If he wasn't sooooo expensive I would love this guy. Sleeping things is, as noted above, really strong in EDH. Getting to sleep multiple things every attack step is crazy strong. A seven mana tag in non-red is going to make it much harder to build around him or put him into other things. The pay off is extreme though since vigilance makes him much more difficult to attack into.
Land:
Crucible of the Spirit Dragon-
This is a neat land but it is super narrow. I only see it being useful in Scion of the Ur-dragon as fixing, though the same could be said of any Dragon themed deck.
The Set:
Overall the set has a lot of neat toys, though its really going to boil down to how good Manifest ends up being when played with. The problem is that most of the cool cards are really limited to Wedge colors when they were not designed to be wedge cards. I made a case in the last post that the hybrid mana rules need to be adjusted in the light of the new set and the cards revealed since that post only reinforce that argument. I would be twice as excited for this set's EDH potential if Alesha could be played in Brion, or Tasigur in Jarad, or Mardu Hordechief in Oloro, or Soulfire Grand Master in Gisela. The rules really need to be updated for me to really fall in love with this set, and if they are then this is honestly one of the best sets for EDH.
Aside from the color issues, the cards themselves are very powerful. There are tons of applications to the printed cards including some of the best-in-slot cards for things like blue removal, white mass resurrection, and red value creatures. Tons of this cards will be staples if not especially deck defining. There are several cool legends that have build around properties. If you like EDH then you are going to want to pay attention to this set, I just wish you could slot more of the awesome cards into more places.
White:
Mastery of the Unseen-
This is a niffty little card. It is going to be expensive to use, but provides some nice advantage if you go through the hoops it sets up. Since it wants you to have lots of mana and lots of creatures it pairs really well with Gae's Cradle. Pairing with green also gives us access to Sylvan Library, which is powerful in conjunction with manifest already. Simply putting this with Rhys or an enchantress shell or something of that nature will pay off but I'm not too sure it would be worthwhile given you have to pay four to put it in play and then the creatures cost. You have to really want the life gain. The one place I can think of that this would be perfect for is Trostani. G/W, plays with lots of creatures, loves to gain life, plays with whole bunches of library manipulation.
Rally the Ancestors-
This is similar to Wake the Dead. There are several key differences though. The first is what your mana is buying you. With WtD you can pay 3 mana to pull up a 10 mana creature. On RtA you end up paying 2 more mana than the creature costs. So you would pay 12 mana to get that creature. However, you get everything that costs 10 or less mana, and you can cast RtA anytime you want, the thing stopping you from attacking with the creatures being an upkeep exile trigger. So you can keep the dudes around through a whole cycle of turns in EDH as blockers. That the card exiles itself and the creatures makes repeating the effect virtually impossible. Dodging the upkeep trigger through sacrifice and bounce lets you hold onto your dudes, and the timing on the trigger lets you have mana again before resolving the exile trigger. Also, if you manage to get some kind of global haste then you can use this to resurrect your graveyard and swing. The trade off being that you either need tons of mana or rather small creatures Altogether a good card that will see play in a variety of value based strategies.
Sage's Reverie-
This is just another good toy for aura voltron strategies. That said, its a very good card in those decks. It'll draw you 2-3 cards and be another +2-3 p/t.
Blue:
Frost Walker-
Why isn't this an illusion? Why does it look like an Eldrazi? Why does the flavor text talk about allies when it looks like the Frost Walker is about to straight up murder that dude?
Neutralizing Blast-
Most decks are going to have multicolor cards that you can hit with this. Its cheap and splash-able. I would rate this as playable if you have targets in mind that you want to hit with it. There are certainly enough 1U conditional counter spells that this is fighting for prominence so it won't see too much play, but don't overlook it.
Reality Shift-
This card just became my go-to removal in heavy blue decks. The odds that the manifest hits are really low, and then they still have to pay for the creature anyway. Reality Shift being an instant also makes it really flexible. It costs two mana so its easy to leave up for it, and there are no targeting restrictions. This is an answer to Eldrazi or other hard to deal with creatures. Marque blue removal, will get played everywhere.
Refocus-
I don't know what breaks this seemingly innocuous card, but something does, and its tremendous value in a Merieke Ri Berite, Dralnu, or other Tap ability focused deck.
Renowned Weaponsmith-
While I'm doubtful that his second ability is going to be used, tapping for multiple arifact mana could get this guy played in Sharuum, Esper Triplets, Teferi Planeswalker, or another artifact mana reliant deck. He's essentially a worse version of Chief Engineer. Still, decks like a certain density of effect and with the singleton nature of EDH additional printings of unique effects help with consistency.
Rite of Undoing-
This has potential to be good in a tempo oriented deck with lots of cantrips and spare permanents. I'm think of Rafiq-esque decks. It obviously pairs well with aggression and enter the battlefield effects.
Will of the Naga-
Another Delve card, this can wind up being very cheap and freeze effects are strong in EDH given how many turns happen between any one player's turn.
Black:
Dark Deal-
I have no idea what I'd do with this since it is about the opposite of all the wheel effects. Maybe it sees play in Nekusar? It is definitely the only thing that does what it does though.
Fearsome Awakening-
If you are in the market for a 5 mana zombify and have a bunch of dragons than this is a cool one.
Ghastly Conscription-
This is a big expensive effect that only promises you having to pay more mana to flip the creatures back over. Rise of the Dark Realms is only two mana more, steals all the creatures face up, and steals all the creatures. Even without a comparison point, I don't like this too much since you have to have the right color of mana to flip the creatures, meaning that the best target is pretty much always yourself. Targeting other players to strip out their graveyard is also likely not going to be useful since the creatures can all just die again. This seems cool but I don't like it all that much.
Grave Strength-
This has the potential to add a lot of power for very little investment. There's plenty of black decks that are based around the yard though, so this can even help enable some strategies.
Merciless Executioner-
Fleshbag Marauder reprint with a different name. Fleshbag has been a staple in EDH for years since it essentially reads each other player sacrifices a creature. I expect having access to two Fleshbags is going to come up a fair amount. Also, ORC TRIBAL.
Orc Sureshot-
This has some potential. Its like Noxius Ghoul, but instead of everything, its target creature. The trade off is that he triggers on everything, making him quite lethal in token strategies. At 4 mana he's a stretch, but he definitely can't stay on the board if your opponents have any desire to play with smallish creatures.
Qarsi High Priest-
I like this guy. He is repeatable Manifest and an instant speed sac outlet at a very small investment in mana.
Sibsig Muckdraggers-
This seems like a good deal, but to play it for 1 mana you essentially have to have 9 cards in your graveyard. It might be there's somewhere you want this but I have a dredge-based Mimeoplasm deck and even I think the price in cards is too steep.
Red:
Dragonrage-
This is a trap. It requires you to be attacking with four creatures to even generate mana. Decks that want to attack with that many dudes, or more, will get better use out of team wide effects. The firebreathing is interesting but not great. I don't see a home for this, unless you really want to Starstorm mid-combat.
Mob Rule-
This does a respectable Insurrection impression. Be prepared to get wrecked by this a few times just after the release and before it really gets on your radar.
Green:
Fruit of the First Tree-
Made for sacrifice/voltron decks as either value or insurance. Specifically, I like putting this in Uril as a way to draw tons of cards if you can't push through the enemy defenses.
Return to the Earth-
This is a really solid card that deals with tons of problems, as long as the enchantments and artifacts have flying.
Sudden Reclamation-
I love this card. I almost want to call it the green Fact or Fiction. Getting a creature, a land, and setting up you graveyard for more goodies is perfect. The four mana tag isn't too bad in the color of rampant growth. That it isn't limited to what you mill with it means you can essentially use it as a value raise dead at instant speed. Graveyard removal in response will stop you from getting back what you initially wanted, but provided you mill a land a creature you can still get full value.
I like this in a lot of places, like Borborigmos, Titania, Lots of Sultai decks, Jarad. Anywhere that you can reasonably expect the top four cards of your deck to have a land and a creature in it.
Temur Sabertooth-
Self-bouncing things is very strong. That you can do it as a non-tap ability for two mana makes it all the stronger. That by doing so makes this creature indestructible crosses the threshold into great territory. The 4 mana price tag to land him doesn't inspire confidence but I guarantee this guy becomes a real nuisance once he's on the battlefield. Anything with good etb effects will like him, but I think he takes on a whole new level of buillshit in Animar. He can easily go infinite in that deck with creatures that generate mana on entering the battlefield, and even without that, the value you'll generate and the number of counters you put on Animar will seal the game pretty fast.
Multicolor:
Tasigur the Golden Fang-
This guy is pretty awesome. He provides card advantage at a reasonable cost considering that its repeatable. As a general he gets to always cost one if you have the two extra cards to delve away each time he dies. He's limited in the decks he can go in, but most Sultai lists are going to appreciate a cheap body and filling the graveyard. He is obviously mana hungry, so putting him in Sidisi with Cradle seems like a solid way to grow cards in hand and tokens on the table which translates into more tokens and more cards. I like this guy quite a bit.
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death-
This is one of the cards that I really wish the hybrid rules didn't pertain to. She would be an awesome R/W general, and I suppose you can play her that way, but she would also be great in R/W or R/B aggressive decks. I think the best card to nab with her right now is Karmic Guide since you can keep looping the Guide for crazy value. R/W really needs more low to the ground aggressive value cards to step up to the other colors. We are getting there as WotC keeps shuffling the effects and power of cards. The problem with that is that Red has been great in Standard and Extended/Modern basically forever, so they are trying really hard to find things that they can do for older formats. I would say that they've been pretty successful, but its still an uphill battle for EDH.
Her trigger is pretty demanding on your mana in an aggressive deck, and you'll need a whispersilk cloak on her eventually since you need to be attacking, but I do really like the direction of the card and the strategy it wants you to play.
Warden of the First Tree-
This guy is obviously supposed to be aping Figure of Destiny. I think he's an order of magnitude worse for EDH as it is an Abzan only card. If you could put him in G/W or G/B there might be some call for him but I can't imagine wanting to pour that much mana into a card that doesn't immediately win the game. To be fair, if you get to activate his third ability in actual magic you probably do just win the game.
Atarka, World Render-
The art is amazing. She feels like a Kaiju. If you want to basically do what Karrthus does, but with easier mana. Also, things like Berzerk or Wolf Run deal double damage, but she naturally has trample so something like Might of Oaks is often fatal on its own. The double strike for all your dragons is also super scary and letting your defenses down when she's ready to go full on beast mode will likely get you killed in a hurry. She also works well slotting into two of the most popular Jund decks, Karrthus and Prossh. I expect to be seeing this Kaiju pretty frequently.
Ojutai, Soul of Winter-
If he wasn't sooooo expensive I would love this guy. Sleeping things is, as noted above, really strong in EDH. Getting to sleep multiple things every attack step is crazy strong. A seven mana tag in non-red is going to make it much harder to build around him or put him into other things. The pay off is extreme though since vigilance makes him much more difficult to attack into.
Land:
Crucible of the Spirit Dragon-
This is a neat land but it is super narrow. I only see it being useful in Scion of the Ur-dragon as fixing, though the same could be said of any Dragon themed deck.
The Set:
Overall the set has a lot of neat toys, though its really going to boil down to how good Manifest ends up being when played with. The problem is that most of the cool cards are really limited to Wedge colors when they were not designed to be wedge cards. I made a case in the last post that the hybrid mana rules need to be adjusted in the light of the new set and the cards revealed since that post only reinforce that argument. I would be twice as excited for this set's EDH potential if Alesha could be played in Brion, or Tasigur in Jarad, or Mardu Hordechief in Oloro, or Soulfire Grand Master in Gisela. The rules really need to be updated for me to really fall in love with this set, and if they are then this is honestly one of the best sets for EDH.
Aside from the color issues, the cards themselves are very powerful. There are tons of applications to the printed cards including some of the best-in-slot cards for things like blue removal, white mass resurrection, and red value creatures. Tons of this cards will be staples if not especially deck defining. There are several cool legends that have build around properties. If you like EDH then you are going to want to pay attention to this set, I just wish you could slot more of the awesome cards into more places.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Another batch of spoiler reviews
White:
Citadel Siege-
This is expensive, but the utility might make it useful for someone who simultaneously wants to grow creatures vertically and have way to manage opposing large blockers. This is probably the Siege that I like the least for EDH. Four mana buys you so much in this format that I don't think this ever really justifies itself.
Lightform-
This is an interesting card. I'm not sure how much I love WW in the cost, but paired with library manipulation this could give someone a nasty surprise when flipped. I could see it in Uril or Brenna, but they would have to be designed in such a way as to have back up creatures to voltron up. The normal use of this is as a 3 mana 2/2 flying lifelink, which just isn't good enough. It can't even fall back on tribal synergies.
Monastery Mentor-
Chapin did a whole Select article on this guy for SCG. I don't have much to add, except that this guy will be a lightning rod the instant you cast him. One thing I'd like to play him with is tons of artifact mana and hurkyl's recall, or something that has inherent global haste. He goes into Jor Kadeen, Narset, or mono-white anthem generals. He's going to be expensive, so keep that in mind if you are playing on a budget.
Wandering Champion -
She'll kick you apart, she'll kick you apart.
This has very few possible homes, but I think I would play it in those places more often than not. W/R loves to get some velocity going, and with multiple opponents getting to connect is going to be pretty frequent. Pair this with Land Tax and you have a pretty steady stream of fuel for pitching. She also functions really well with equipment since getting to keep digging is going to work out for you. W/R generals are going to want her more than W/U or W/R/U generals are, but digging into counter magic is going to be helpful.
Blue:
Marang River Prowler-
The prowler costs a lot, and you have to pay that cost every time you want to re-cast him. He pairs pretty well with skullclamp, but so do lots of cards. I don't see him being good enough in U/B since you can have access to Bloodghast or Recurring Skeleton, but in U/G he might find a more solid home. There's also the density of effect for a deck like Grimgrin which just wants as much of this as it can get. Prowler is marginal but might be played because he just does a fairly unique thing.
Monastery Siege-
My favorite siege, this gets a huge nod because of its mana cost. This is cheap, flexible and powerful. The fact that it draws you a card means it interacts with dredge and draw triggers. It lets you put things into your graveyard, and it provides a significant amount of velocity. Its other mode also protects itself as well as all your other permanents from spot removal. This has applications in any blue deck that wants to draw a lot of cards or protect itself from spot removal, which is basically all of them.
Supplant Form-
This card will be an EDH staple. Its the same principle as Gather Specimens, but the timing isn't nearly as restricted. I see many instances of someone cheating out an Avenger or Eldrazi and getting blown out by this card. There are tons of fatties in any given game of EDH and this can even lend itself to loops pretty easily with enough mana. This is a battlecruiser card and will lead to tons of fun moments when someone thinks their winning and gets the game flipped upside down on them.
Black:
Battle Brawler-
Orc Tribal Ho!
Mardu Strike Leader-
This dude is fairly vanilla for EDH. Dash is cool but there are better bodies, better Dashers, and better token makers. Maybe if you are doing some hardcore comes into play non-sense in R/B then this guy could be a factor, like a Flamerush Rider in number of bodies provided. Unlike the Rider, this guy's tokens hang around, letting you feed them to skullclamp or another sac outlet for value later on. Again, all the on attack triggers benefit from the multiplayer nature of edh. He might find a home in some Jund-y deck like Prossh.
Red:
Flamewake Phoenix-
More red value! yay! This creature is patently absurd. We have seen in the past that 2/2 flying haste for 3 mana is pretty good on its own. Getting it back into play tapped and attacking for R whenever you can attack is going to be really annoying to deal with for your opponents. Factor in that your opponents don't need to kill it, that you can eat it with Gargadon or whatever payoff suits your fancy, and we have a engine going on. It basically can only ever block the first time you cast it, so there is that. And sometimes its going to suicide into three opposing players that can block it, but getting it back is soooooo cheap. I can think of plenty of R/X decks that want more consistent food.
Hungering Yeti-
5 mana 4/4s with conditional flash are not where I want to be.
Green:
Abzan Kinsguard-
4 mana 3/3s with conditional lifelink are not where I want to be.
Frontier Siege-
This one is more conditional that the others, but is potentially very powerful. Its reminiscent of Skyshroud Claim the first time you cast it, adding back half its cost in the next main phase. The next turn it generates four mana, all of it colored. This mode alone makes it an auto-include in Omnath. I don't think you'll often see the other mode picked, but it tells us how much flying the next set is going to involve if green is getting an effect that relies on flying creatures. This is a good card, its just all about if you can use the mana at the somewhat awkward intervals you get it.
Multicolor:
Daghatar the Adamant-
This guy is basically a directly worse version of Ghave in EDH. He costs more to activate, his activation costs colored mana, and it does less. If you could play him in W/G or W/B then he'd probably be fine. If he cost 1 less then you play him in Tiny Leaders and he'd be fine. As is I don't see him fitting into the format anywhere when for 1 mana more you get to play one of the best generals in the format.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest-
For half the mana of Narset you get a very aggressive general. I don't know if I like him more or less than Narset for Voltron. On the one hand he's a threat much earlier and is more explosive. On the other hand, Narset has the best word for a general that you are trying to load up on: Hexproof. Either way this guy will be played as a general and be good. He can probably be one of your creatures in Narset and vice versa. One thing this guy can do is be played as a Tiny Leader, which is something I'll talk about more extensively in its own post.
Torrent Elemental-
This guy is pretty stout in combination with effects like Delve or something else that exiles for value. I'm thinking of putting him in my Mimeoplasm deck since the on-attack trigger turns off blockers and getting to re-cast him afterward is good value. It also helps fight through some amount of graveyard hate. The only downside is how expensive he is.
Brutal Hordechief-
Hello Nurse!
This guy is like Hellrider, except the trigger is much stronger, but he doesn't get to attack immediately. For EDH I'm really sad you can't play him in Oloro :(. We almost have enough attack oriented stuff in Mardu to make a solid deck. The wording of the trigger lets it penetrate protection and hexproof of the defending player, but luckily they did not word it in such a way as to be broken by draining EACH opponent. The activated ability is expensive but can be activated during other players combat to interfere with blocking decisions as well as on your turn to let you get through lots of damage.
Shaman of the Great Hunt-
Another Hellrider? What is it with Khans and great four mana aggressive cards?
Anyway, this guy is definitely great. He's still held back by the color identity rules, but his activated ability is a very scary threat, and his triggered ability is also very scary. That he can build creatures up to counting for his activated ability is super cool. I think this guy is going to be solid and interesting, which is the best kind of card. He'll see play in just about every Temur deck.
Dromoka the Eternal-
Mana efficient dragons with upside are cool. I like her, but I don't know where I'd want her. She's obviously better the more you care about the counters or the more dragons you have. I doubt I'd want to play her as a general over the crazy depth of G/W generals there are out there, but she could see play in dragon focused decks like Scion or counter focused decks like Ghave. She is pretty good just as a beatstick but without protection of any kind finishing the job with her is going to be hard.
Silumgar, Drifting Death-
I like just about everything about this card. The art, the flavor text, all of it is awesome. He is expensive and doesn't kill players very fast, but he is really good at controlling the board, and the more triggers you get the harder it is to stop him. The hexproof and toughness make it very hard to get Sil to stop swinging, basically forcing your opponent to have 8 power in the air before you even have to do anything. I can see him having a deck built around him for the guy that wants to play a more traditional U/B control list with lots of instants and a few cool dragon finishers.
Aside:
That's it for the cards we've seen. I wanted to talk about this as I was writing out the card reviews, but it seemed more appropriate for the end. They are trying to build a mono-color multicolor set.You'll notice how many of the cards I listed in multicolor that are only there because of the color identity rules for edh, but whose actual mana cost is one color. All of the legends, the mythic cycle of hybrid mana cards, and so forth. I decided not to put the uncommon cycle in multicolor because you can play them in mono-color even if they would be just vanilla. They tried to build this set in such a way that you can pick one color in limited and just play basics of that color and be fine, but if you do play some of another color that'll only help you. That's because FRF is attached to the wedge set. They want you to be able to keep your options open in limited and not get screwed over by color, but still have cards that have more complex and open constructed applications. You can be in R/x in your first booster and then transition in Mardu or Temur in KTK. In standard or limited, you can easily play Brutal Hordechief in mono-B, B/W, B/R, or Mardu, but in EDH you can only play it in Mardu. So while the way these cards are cost in every other format makes them more open, the costs make the cards more limited in EDH. This is the essential paradox of the color identity rule.
Hybrid mana was designed specifically as an either or state of mana, making the cards more open and easier to play. Color identity sees hybrid as an "and" state instead of an "or" state thus limiting the application of the cards. I really dislike the rules committees ruling on hybrid mana because it is exactly the opposite as the intention of the cards that have hybrid mana. If there had only been Ravnica then Shadowmoor, maybe it wouldn't be as much of an issue to me, but as the spoiling of Yasova Dragonclaw proves, they consider Hybrid mana to be evergreen and will use it wherever they think it fits into the design of the set. Hybrid isn't going to be some corner case in the future but an ever growing portion of the card base. I don't know why they made the decision they did, but I imagine it has to do with complexity. That handling hybrid mana differently would require a significant rules update and that people buying into the format would have to figure out more than they consider fair, that magic is a complicated enough game and that they want EDH to be as close to real magic as possible. I give the people that play magic more credit and think that tweaking hybrid to work as the designers intended is a noble, attainable, and non-catastrophic goal.
This isn't the first time that people have had to present good arguments to get them to change their mind. Memnarch, Bosh, and other generals used to be useless since color identity didn't take into account the text box of the card in question. While hybrid mana won't ruin EDH and the gains of changing the rules right now would be relatively minor, its something that is going to come up over and over as they print more hybrid cards. I'm certain I'm not the only person that thinks that the hybrid rules are restrictive and against the spirit of the cards it appears on. I'd love to play Debtor's Knell in Mimeoplasm or Brutal Hordchief in Oloro, and those are just the first two that come to mind. I'm not sure how I'd reword the rule. Maybe since its supposed to be either or you'd have to pick one color beforehand? It would need some testing to sus out what felt right, but the current iteration has been out lived.
Citadel Siege-
This is expensive, but the utility might make it useful for someone who simultaneously wants to grow creatures vertically and have way to manage opposing large blockers. This is probably the Siege that I like the least for EDH. Four mana buys you so much in this format that I don't think this ever really justifies itself.
Lightform-
This is an interesting card. I'm not sure how much I love WW in the cost, but paired with library manipulation this could give someone a nasty surprise when flipped. I could see it in Uril or Brenna, but they would have to be designed in such a way as to have back up creatures to voltron up. The normal use of this is as a 3 mana 2/2 flying lifelink, which just isn't good enough. It can't even fall back on tribal synergies.
Monastery Mentor-
Chapin did a whole Select article on this guy for SCG. I don't have much to add, except that this guy will be a lightning rod the instant you cast him. One thing I'd like to play him with is tons of artifact mana and hurkyl's recall, or something that has inherent global haste. He goes into Jor Kadeen, Narset, or mono-white anthem generals. He's going to be expensive, so keep that in mind if you are playing on a budget.
Wandering Champion -
She'll kick you apart, she'll kick you apart.
This has very few possible homes, but I think I would play it in those places more often than not. W/R loves to get some velocity going, and with multiple opponents getting to connect is going to be pretty frequent. Pair this with Land Tax and you have a pretty steady stream of fuel for pitching. She also functions really well with equipment since getting to keep digging is going to work out for you. W/R generals are going to want her more than W/U or W/R/U generals are, but digging into counter magic is going to be helpful.
Blue:
Marang River Prowler-
The prowler costs a lot, and you have to pay that cost every time you want to re-cast him. He pairs pretty well with skullclamp, but so do lots of cards. I don't see him being good enough in U/B since you can have access to Bloodghast or Recurring Skeleton, but in U/G he might find a more solid home. There's also the density of effect for a deck like Grimgrin which just wants as much of this as it can get. Prowler is marginal but might be played because he just does a fairly unique thing.
Monastery Siege-
My favorite siege, this gets a huge nod because of its mana cost. This is cheap, flexible and powerful. The fact that it draws you a card means it interacts with dredge and draw triggers. It lets you put things into your graveyard, and it provides a significant amount of velocity. Its other mode also protects itself as well as all your other permanents from spot removal. This has applications in any blue deck that wants to draw a lot of cards or protect itself from spot removal, which is basically all of them.
Supplant Form-
This card will be an EDH staple. Its the same principle as Gather Specimens, but the timing isn't nearly as restricted. I see many instances of someone cheating out an Avenger or Eldrazi and getting blown out by this card. There are tons of fatties in any given game of EDH and this can even lend itself to loops pretty easily with enough mana. This is a battlecruiser card and will lead to tons of fun moments when someone thinks their winning and gets the game flipped upside down on them.
Black:
Battle Brawler-
Orc Tribal Ho!
Mardu Strike Leader-
This dude is fairly vanilla for EDH. Dash is cool but there are better bodies, better Dashers, and better token makers. Maybe if you are doing some hardcore comes into play non-sense in R/B then this guy could be a factor, like a Flamerush Rider in number of bodies provided. Unlike the Rider, this guy's tokens hang around, letting you feed them to skullclamp or another sac outlet for value later on. Again, all the on attack triggers benefit from the multiplayer nature of edh. He might find a home in some Jund-y deck like Prossh.
Red:
Flamewake Phoenix-
More red value! yay! This creature is patently absurd. We have seen in the past that 2/2 flying haste for 3 mana is pretty good on its own. Getting it back into play tapped and attacking for R whenever you can attack is going to be really annoying to deal with for your opponents. Factor in that your opponents don't need to kill it, that you can eat it with Gargadon or whatever payoff suits your fancy, and we have a engine going on. It basically can only ever block the first time you cast it, so there is that. And sometimes its going to suicide into three opposing players that can block it, but getting it back is soooooo cheap. I can think of plenty of R/X decks that want more consistent food.
Hungering Yeti-
5 mana 4/4s with conditional flash are not where I want to be.
Green:
Abzan Kinsguard-
4 mana 3/3s with conditional lifelink are not where I want to be.
Frontier Siege-
This one is more conditional that the others, but is potentially very powerful. Its reminiscent of Skyshroud Claim the first time you cast it, adding back half its cost in the next main phase. The next turn it generates four mana, all of it colored. This mode alone makes it an auto-include in Omnath. I don't think you'll often see the other mode picked, but it tells us how much flying the next set is going to involve if green is getting an effect that relies on flying creatures. This is a good card, its just all about if you can use the mana at the somewhat awkward intervals you get it.
Multicolor:
Daghatar the Adamant-
This guy is basically a directly worse version of Ghave in EDH. He costs more to activate, his activation costs colored mana, and it does less. If you could play him in W/G or W/B then he'd probably be fine. If he cost 1 less then you play him in Tiny Leaders and he'd be fine. As is I don't see him fitting into the format anywhere when for 1 mana more you get to play one of the best generals in the format.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest-
For half the mana of Narset you get a very aggressive general. I don't know if I like him more or less than Narset for Voltron. On the one hand he's a threat much earlier and is more explosive. On the other hand, Narset has the best word for a general that you are trying to load up on: Hexproof. Either way this guy will be played as a general and be good. He can probably be one of your creatures in Narset and vice versa. One thing this guy can do is be played as a Tiny Leader, which is something I'll talk about more extensively in its own post.
Torrent Elemental-
This guy is pretty stout in combination with effects like Delve or something else that exiles for value. I'm thinking of putting him in my Mimeoplasm deck since the on-attack trigger turns off blockers and getting to re-cast him afterward is good value. It also helps fight through some amount of graveyard hate. The only downside is how expensive he is.
Brutal Hordechief-
Hello Nurse!
This guy is like Hellrider, except the trigger is much stronger, but he doesn't get to attack immediately. For EDH I'm really sad you can't play him in Oloro :(. We almost have enough attack oriented stuff in Mardu to make a solid deck. The wording of the trigger lets it penetrate protection and hexproof of the defending player, but luckily they did not word it in such a way as to be broken by draining EACH opponent. The activated ability is expensive but can be activated during other players combat to interfere with blocking decisions as well as on your turn to let you get through lots of damage.
Shaman of the Great Hunt-
Another Hellrider? What is it with Khans and great four mana aggressive cards?
Anyway, this guy is definitely great. He's still held back by the color identity rules, but his activated ability is a very scary threat, and his triggered ability is also very scary. That he can build creatures up to counting for his activated ability is super cool. I think this guy is going to be solid and interesting, which is the best kind of card. He'll see play in just about every Temur deck.
Dromoka the Eternal-
Mana efficient dragons with upside are cool. I like her, but I don't know where I'd want her. She's obviously better the more you care about the counters or the more dragons you have. I doubt I'd want to play her as a general over the crazy depth of G/W generals there are out there, but she could see play in dragon focused decks like Scion or counter focused decks like Ghave. She is pretty good just as a beatstick but without protection of any kind finishing the job with her is going to be hard.
Silumgar, Drifting Death-
I like just about everything about this card. The art, the flavor text, all of it is awesome. He is expensive and doesn't kill players very fast, but he is really good at controlling the board, and the more triggers you get the harder it is to stop him. The hexproof and toughness make it very hard to get Sil to stop swinging, basically forcing your opponent to have 8 power in the air before you even have to do anything. I can see him having a deck built around him for the guy that wants to play a more traditional U/B control list with lots of instants and a few cool dragon finishers.
Aside:
That's it for the cards we've seen. I wanted to talk about this as I was writing out the card reviews, but it seemed more appropriate for the end. They are trying to build a mono-color multicolor set.You'll notice how many of the cards I listed in multicolor that are only there because of the color identity rules for edh, but whose actual mana cost is one color. All of the legends, the mythic cycle of hybrid mana cards, and so forth. I decided not to put the uncommon cycle in multicolor because you can play them in mono-color even if they would be just vanilla. They tried to build this set in such a way that you can pick one color in limited and just play basics of that color and be fine, but if you do play some of another color that'll only help you. That's because FRF is attached to the wedge set. They want you to be able to keep your options open in limited and not get screwed over by color, but still have cards that have more complex and open constructed applications. You can be in R/x in your first booster and then transition in Mardu or Temur in KTK. In standard or limited, you can easily play Brutal Hordechief in mono-B, B/W, B/R, or Mardu, but in EDH you can only play it in Mardu. So while the way these cards are cost in every other format makes them more open, the costs make the cards more limited in EDH. This is the essential paradox of the color identity rule.
Hybrid mana was designed specifically as an either or state of mana, making the cards more open and easier to play. Color identity sees hybrid as an "and" state instead of an "or" state thus limiting the application of the cards. I really dislike the rules committees ruling on hybrid mana because it is exactly the opposite as the intention of the cards that have hybrid mana. If there had only been Ravnica then Shadowmoor, maybe it wouldn't be as much of an issue to me, but as the spoiling of Yasova Dragonclaw proves, they consider Hybrid mana to be evergreen and will use it wherever they think it fits into the design of the set. Hybrid isn't going to be some corner case in the future but an ever growing portion of the card base. I don't know why they made the decision they did, but I imagine it has to do with complexity. That handling hybrid mana differently would require a significant rules update and that people buying into the format would have to figure out more than they consider fair, that magic is a complicated enough game and that they want EDH to be as close to real magic as possible. I give the people that play magic more credit and think that tweaking hybrid to work as the designers intended is a noble, attainable, and non-catastrophic goal.
This isn't the first time that people have had to present good arguments to get them to change their mind. Memnarch, Bosh, and other generals used to be useless since color identity didn't take into account the text box of the card in question. While hybrid mana won't ruin EDH and the gains of changing the rules right now would be relatively minor, its something that is going to come up over and over as they print more hybrid cards. I'm certain I'm not the only person that thinks that the hybrid rules are restrictive and against the spirit of the cards it appears on. I'd love to play Debtor's Knell in Mimeoplasm or Brutal Hordchief in Oloro, and those are just the first two that come to mind. I'm not sure how I'd reword the rule. Maybe since its supposed to be either or you'd have to pick one color beforehand? It would need some testing to sus out what felt right, but the current iteration has been out lived.
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