Magic: The Gathering C/D

they're blasting the guild champions out pretty fast, we're only missing GW and WR now right? and i think the GW is in the development article tonight. meanwhile we've gotten almost no mythics. weird spoiler season when the flagship cards aren't mythic

The champions were originally supposed to be mythics but they didn't have enough mythic rare slots in the set to make that happen so they got changed to rare.

i think the selesnya mythic is the best card spoiled yet:

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/dgm/tiwoirwiixix/u1gpj8j2ko_EN.jpg

it's just a card advantage machine and what more does one want

holy cow that thing is really fuckin good

thats the two drop i wanted for bant delver right?

Yeah some really good stuff got spoiled today. The mythic is insane, it's gonna be a 4-of in many decks. Basically Thragtusk for aggro decks. Can't imagine the floor on that card being less than $20 for a long time. Putrefy will obv be played if shit like Murder is seeing play. Far/Away seems like it has its uses - control decks often want effects that can be played early but get better later on. Even Council of the Absolute may get played. This set is looking like a high value set so far.

Maro did hint that there would be some high-profile reprints in DGM and somehow I doubt that Putrefy is the only one. Lightning Helix or bust!!

that mythic is comparable to grand abolisher, a card that was around for a year and saw a reasonable amount of play in standard aggro decks. it's a bit worse because it doesn't lock your opponent out completely on your turn but also a bit better because it leaves the keldon warlord token behind. i think it's gonna be a bit overhyped relative to how much play it will see but it's certainly a good card and possibly eternal format playable too in GW hatebear type decks

there's no way they're putting lightning helix in the same standard as boros charm and snapcaster unless they basically want to shout from the rooftops "we want UWR tempo to be the dominant deck like delver/cawblade"

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/dgm/tiwoirwiixix/5prumpmiw3_EN.jpg

this card is going to be super awkward

this new guy though is better than abolisher IMO because he works against all sorts of decks. the decks that play mass removal (and therefore can kinda nerf the token) are the ones that tend to play spells during the opponent's turn. if you're not up vs. control it's still a real good Doomed Traveller type card. I kinda question if GW needs any real synergy at all or if you can just build around dropping dumb over-the-curve creatures every turn

yeah I'm surprised they made that goblin card

i thought they really shied away from things like that outside of overcosted rares. kudos for essentially slotting an Unglued card into the set!

btw I'm not predicting the return of Lightning Helix, but I would think at least Mortify should come back? I dunno it just seems weird to have only one high-profile reprint like that.

the only saving grace is that it is so terrible that it will rarely be played

i think there could be one more and i think mortify is reasonably likely if so. though it always bothered me that putrefy has the no regen clause and mortify doesn't

lol I literally never noticed that

Hmm I thought about Voice a little more and you may be right, cider. Abolisher isn't the best comparison because people played that primarily for the hate ability, whereas Voice is more a value guy like Thragtusk. The Abolisher clause on Voice is not nearly as relevant as the dies clause. But I realize that the token probably won't get much bigger than 3/3 normally, which makes the card similar to Loyal Cathar, which never saw a lot of play. Voice is better for sure, but not sure how much better.

Helix might be a little much to reprint, but it wouldn't surprise me. Love to get Electrolyze or Mortify back.

coiling oracle is another card they could reprint that people would be excited about. Snake Elf definitely fits in with the new simic creature types

I think Loyal Cathar would have seen some play if they hadn't printed better cards like Doomed Traveller or Strangleroot Geist. It's just a real good package for not a lot of mana and it can be a nightmare for certain decks. I do agree that it's not really right to compare this to Abolisher.

oh my god people are whining so hard about Goblin Test Pilot

The capacity for whining in general on mtgsalvation is astounding

haha why

its annoying to select the random target is all i meant, its clearly not constructed playable and is sort of a fringey sideboard card in limited probably

these are the same people who thought ral's ultimate was terrible because of the 1/32 chance that you get 5 tails

i'm seeing a lot of "well Izzet was the worst guild anyway, so instead of Electrolyze we obviously get this...I'm surprised they didn't think a 0/2 flying was broken enough!! LOL!!"

plus whining that people are going to play the random ability wrong by rolling 2d6s or whatever. "rules nightmare" is getting thrown around a lot, as though generating a random number is that difficult.

basically people getting real mad at goofy cards that are not constructed playable

well if there are 11 permanents in play generating a random number and assigning everything a number 1-13 is a pain in the ass

and the end result isn't even fun or interesting

like I agree w/ the whiners that the card was a bad idea it just won't be a huge issue cause nobody will play this

if it did 5 damage and could really swing a game that would be one thing

somebody who is a real dick could bring it to a huge edh game

people would whine so much harder if this thing were playable; same reason why coinflip cards have to be unplayable, because nobody wants to lose a match in a Grand Prix or something on a coin flip. hence why Frenetic Efreet seems to be so hated.

I loved frentic efreet. was that reprinted?

nope

would be terrible in today's game wouldn't it

yeah definitely

a 3 mana 2/1 flyer was alright back then. plus the idea of cards "phasing out" kinda left us long ago - I always thought it was funny how every card with "phasing" was basically unplayable. we've come a long way

that was in a world champ deck iirc!

i think you're thinking of rainbow efreet

it placed second: https://www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp?x=results/ptworlds97_decks

rainbow efreet was rad too

that would be limited playable today for sure

those circles of protection even

imagine trying to play wildfire emissary in constructed today

well Frenetic Efreet got nerfed quite a bit with the changes to damage stacking. now it would just be a 2/1 that randomly dodges removal.

people didn't play a lot of lands in those days, did they? i guess if you're doing 4 thawing glaciers you can live off just two but still this seems pretty light

slam it imo

yeah I remember 20-22 being the accepted norm and was surprised when I came back to the game

lol the third place list is playing 16 lands? is that right? pre-modern competitive magic is kinda nuts

the pitch cards were quite good too which justifies a little less land

yeah playing enough lands is a relatively modern development in mtg strategy

lol @ people playing 46 land esper drownyard decks now though, maybe the pendulum has swung too far

though some of that is the switch from counterspell to mana leak as the baseline good counterspell, and then from mana leak to nothing that punishes playing higher cmc spells

when your deck is built around casting a 4-mana spell to stabilize, you need to play 27+ lands because you want to hit your 4th land drop on turn 4 every single game. those older control decks were better at trading 1 for 1 without losing too much tempo, so you could skimp on lands more

yeah the most expensive spell in that RUW deck is hammer of borgarden