Magic: The Gathering C/D

Standard is faster now than in Astral Slide's heyday, but I think it's possible. Depends a lot on what the Std cards look like - so far Renewed Faith slots in pretty well

wanted to say it makes a neat combo with Smugglers Copter but then I remembered it was banned

there may be others but a little sad to see the cycling buildaround at rare.

blue god is kind of interesting. it doesn't seem particularly strong in any deck that would care about getting a dragon out for 3 mana, but maybe a control finisher in some format? idk, hand size requirement maybe just too finicky for the payoff.

yea really would love if it was "6 or more" but that seems a bit too good

6 or more would be obnoxious since it would come down online on turn 3 without any additional work

right - but you'd still be limited to playing one card per turn

that said I did misread the activated ability, which lets you online this on turn 4

it still seems a bit hard to use. I'm not sure really what kind of deck wants this. It looks like a finisher for the sort of draw-go decks that don't really exist anymore. Skies-type decks can't use it. It's easy to imagine a deck using the Red one, this one on the other hand....

nu-Gideon is hilarious, wotc is really trolling all the people who have been calling for a ban on the BFZ one.

i think the planeswalker card type would just be better all round if the typically competitive/midrange pw were 5 mana and the cheap/aggro one 4, rather than 4 and 3. they would be less dominant and they could do more with them.

gotta sell those packs tho

remember that when they developed this set, it was supposed to rotate BFZ out of standard. so we're gonna see some weird vestiges of that, like the discard spell that's real similar to transgress the mind, and this gideon

that said, this gideon is one of those cards that reads better than it is. it's not nearly on the same level as the BFZ one.

yea the "ultimate" is probably not very good at all - I wonder how often it'll actually get used

as one of my friends put it 'if you control a planeswalker, you can't lose' is not actually an emblem, mostly just a description of a magic board state

the emblem is more interesting in eternal formats where there are decks whose plan vs planeswalkers is 'ignore them and combo kill opponent'

yeah legacy dnt is the deck I have the most experience w/ and I was excited about the possibilities for like, 3 seconds, but there just aren't enough of those decks in legacy / they generally have some way to do damage to a planeswalker too. even fewer in modern. even the purest of combo decks in modern (storm / ad naus) win can kill a walker on their combo turn.

ad naus could play this instead of phyrexian unlife in some matchups though heh

the throwback standard gauntlet thing is back today. maybe it will work this time. i am def intrigued, could be fun to try out altho my own expectations for actually winning anything would be pretty low.

of course, my expectations are low in general currently after getting a sound beating at the hands of iatee in an mm3 league match yesterday.

this was my deck btw

http://i.imgur.com/IojCWtE.jpg

gifts package def felt like cheating

RS what's your mtgo name? curious if i've played you in the past year or however far back the game logs go

I've played one of lamp's friends while he watched before, and I've played multiple of my irl friends

it's kinda crazy what a small world mtgo is

the player numbers on the draft leagues look high until you realize that pretty much everyone who plays mtgo plays those

right yeah. for legacy leagues it's like a small town where everyone knows each other.

yeah gifts was a real groan both times. i was v jealous of how much more fun your deck was than mine.

btw i could see your last couple msgs after i conceded but of course it wouldn't let reply. another great mtgo innovation.

cider my username is onami. are you still smh? i don't recall ever seeing you

yeah i've been playing on an alternate account a bunch lately since it had some play points / QPs on it that i wanted to use but smh is still my main one and i'll be back on it for amonkhet

I remember frogbs figured out from this thread that he and I had played against each other in Cube

sounds about right. I remember once playing against someone in a draft whose username was the name of a good friend of mine, someone I'd been playing Magic with since I was 11, but didn't know played online. I messaged him on FB - "dude, am I playing you on MTGO" right now? turns out it was him. he kicked my ass, by the way.

we get Cat lord

also some good hosers for Scrapheap Scrounger, Saheeli, and artifacts in general

cat lord so strong for limited, getting ready to hate that card.

the throne strikes me as more of a fun that competitive card, but it is interesting coming right after improvise. could maybe be something there for standard.

and another efficiently costed large blue flyer. i wonder if there might be some kind of blue dump-your-hand aggro deck here.

lol at this 4/4 lifelink for 1w. always watching is still legal right? if we can get white a competitive planeswalker, maybe one that makes tokens even, there might be something here.

Throne being legendary makes it more difficult as a build around but it still seems quite good - are there any viable improvise decks in standard?

Really like some of the exert designs. The exert to draw creature seems like it creates two interesting decisions: a decision between racing and card advantage if they don't have a blocker; and a decision whether to "cycle" the card if they have a big blocker. combined with actual cycling, my hunch is that this will be a limited format pros will like

the ceiling on this limited format is pretty high since it essentially has both of the 2 best limited mechanics (flashback and cycling)

one thing that people tend to get wrong though is they see mana sink mechanics with expensive costs like embalm, flashback, monstrosity and assume that they are getting a slow grindy format when it actually has the opposite effect - more things to do with mana means proactive decks get to play more turns before they run out of gas, and their 6th/7th land can remain live where in a set like kaladesh it was just a dead draw

the liliana is very good and deserves more attention than the gideon imo

5 mana walkers have to clear a pretty high bar, even for standard. I think it will see some play, but I'm not convinced it's very good.

planeswalkers that can make blockers every turn without spending loyalty have an extremely high floor

strong card but this is kind of exactly the kind of thing i was thinking of when i was talking about how they should do planeswalkers. i do think this will be impactful on standard but i can't imagine it ever getting the moans that gideon AOZ has.

not a fan of the name tho.

it is awkward that the EMN liliana is so good already and does similar stuff, i'd probably want a split of 1 of these and 2-3 of the EMN one in liliana decks for now

so Champion of Rhonas, there's no possible way this card is healthy at all

what the hell

not to be extremely magic player but it seems worse than marvel currently? and marvel isnt all the great rn

did elvish piper ever see constructed play?

this effect is never quite as good as you think, is what i'm getting at. at least on a tap ability on a creature.

ha i was wondering the same thing so i did a quick mtgtop8 search and it was played in 12-post in modern before that deck got banned out. could not find any other finishes. also a popular edh card unsurprisingly

i like how all the trials are just replacements for the (should be) rotating oaths. having a hard time getting a handle and the new set: nothings all that powerful but lots of hate for vehicles.

the embalm angel eats planeswalkers which is useful in standard

this set reminds me of theros not only in the ancient civ theme but also in how unconcerned it seems with what's going on in the sets preceding it

does champion of rhonas have potential to be better right now than previous examples of this effect because of traverse?

there seem to be a fair amount of overlap with SOI but i guess unsurprisingly little connection with KLD

KLD is the classic example of the lifecycle of a set whose constructed-worthy mechanics are linear - it takes over standard on release when it's a large % of the cardpool and then its influence wanes as its decks can't get new cards. we saw the same thing with Theros and devotion. KLD has hit particularly hard because of how much of a bust BFZ was, there aren't really any allies or eldrazi decks competing for metagame share.