Magic: The Gathering C/D

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/silvestri-says-m14-by-the-numbers/

yeah i knew that data was floating around out there, its apparently very against the mtgo TOS to collect it though so it's hard to actually get a copy of it from anyone who has it because they don't want to get in trouble

finally 3-0'd a m14 8-4 draft:
http://i.imgur.com/RiBr0TG.jpg

I had a really sweet w/b enchantment deck last night in swiss but I threw a match due to a lazy duress. white is getting so open that my #2 serra angel wheeled.

wait is that a foil thune?

shhh

how do you like Goblin Diplomats? I've been pondering whether it might have a role in standard.

its fine in limited, i don't see it cracking standard except maybe as a sideboard card vs bigger creature decks

red's 2-drop slot is still loaded after rotation, with burning-tree emissary, young pyromancer, firefist striker, ash zealot, and gore-house chainwalker.

I'm still waiting for the Young Pyromancer deck to come along

there are young pyromancer decks in all formats, what are you looking for?

if they exist I just haven't seen them. it's definitely the M14 card (along with Chandra) that makes me want to build a Standard deck again.

I could see Goblin Diplomat potentially swapping out with Firefist Striker. I see them as filling a similar function.

except firefist striker is also hitting for 2 each time

in standard it's mostly just played in a mono-red aggro build with 4 spear 4 pillar of flame 4 shock to trigger it (and rebuy chandra's phoenix)

in modern there's a UR delver deck that's been using it, ctrl+f for young pyro here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/5832067

people have run it in legacy and vintage too though it's a bit sketchier there

is that monowhite lifegain deck just a gimmick deck that got lucky or is it actually viable in modern?

I'm thinking of 'getting into modern'

that's a real modern deck called 'soul sisters', it's not that good anymore but it gives some decks a very hard time and is dirt cheap for modern so people still play it.

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=144849&d=1377576815

looks like the 'returning' mechanic is Radiance

wait. it's Chroma isn't it?

also, this is the other other mechanic:

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=144847&d=1377576805

kinda funny as a lot of people guessed exactly this, seems really cool though. kinda like a reverse Living Weapon.

Yeah that's Chroma. Not a very memorable mechanic but I'm willing to give it another chance. It played ok the first time around.

That second card you posted is one confusing ass card. So if you play it with Bestow, it's an Aura that becomes a creature if the creature it enchants dies?

Oh weird, if you cast it as an Aura and the creature you target dies in response, the Bestow card will come into play as a creature (according to Matt Tabak). Pretty cool mechanic, but not very intuitive.

interesting - this was posted on MTGSalvation before devotion was spoiled:

Thassa, God of the Sea 2U
Legendary Enchantment Creature - God M
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to blue is less than five, Thassa isn’t a creature. (Each {U} in the mana costs of permanents you control adds to your devotion to blue.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, scry 1.
1U: Target creature you control can’t be blocked this turn.
5/5

these new mechanics seem kinda clunky

also way too expensive to affect limited, at least the examples given

set seems kinda edh friendly

well the cards shown are rares and they tend to show the big splashy stuff first. I would imagine that Limited won't be too fast, given everything we know about the set. So I think these cards are all kinda bombish. Bestow will play pretty well, so long as they don't make a lot of it. They're basically auras that don't 2-for-1 you and aren't dead draws if you don't have creatures out, seems like they'll be quite powerful in limited.

Can't remember whether it was officially said or just inferred, but the set is expected to be ROE-levels of slow. Basically every revealed card points in that direction so far. Bestow and Monstrosity both have to be costed pretty high to be fair.

by the way, if that God card actually is real, it's absurd

wait so do the auras turn into creatures even if the first-aura'd creature dies two turns later?

otherwise they still can get you two for one'd and that angel doesn't seem much better than serra angel

according to the rules manager, you cant get 2-for-1'd on those. it becomes a 4/4 whenever the enchanted creature dies (whenever that may be) or if the creature becomes an illegal target on resolution (say, with instant-speed removal) - seems like they purposely designed it to avoid the inherent card disadvantage of auras

i think this set is likely to be fast-ish in limited, not sure where people are getting the slow thing from

the fact that all the abilities seem to cost like 8 mana!

obviously it's hard to tell if we haven't seen what the commons/uncommons are like, but so far all the mechanics we've seen seem to lend themselves towards making big creatures or building up an army

monstrosity in particular has the same effect as flashback in that it gives the aggressor an additional play in the midgame before running out of gas. both the Heroic abilities we've seen are offensive-minded. devotion rewards drafting a low curve since it means you'll have more things in play to count towards it when you cast your devotion spell.

I mean that's still only worth it if the cards in that curve are worth playing

I guess we'll see

obviously we need to see the commons/uncommons but at the very least i'm comfortable predicting this to be a tempo-based format like innistrad. doesn't necessarily mean it will be fast in terms of turns per game, just that the gameplay will reward being proactive (m14 is a good example of the opposite, it rewards patience).

it rewards being patient enough to be in a draft where you got blue or green or the r/b sac deck

well i'm talking about how the games play out, not the composition of decks.

yeah I know I was joking

Monstrosity feels a bit more like Kicker to me? Like I would think the early drops with it won't be particularly useful on their own. Heroic seems like it'll have an attacking focus but there will be some assembly required. Something like "all creatures you control get +1/+1" requires you to have some sort of army + something to target your own guy in order to really be effective

Yeah I agree with frog; Heroic feels more like a combo mechanic rather than an aggro one, and if Bestow creatures are what we expect to target these guys, I can't imagine many of them costing less than 4 mana. Also Anthousa is very much a late game card - you can't target it and still have lands to attack with until late in the game. Monstrosity is basically level up. Bestow creatures can be played as creatures but I think players will be annoyed if you aren't able to Bestow them at least half of the time. I dunno, everything I see points to an environment where you play early drops but it's mostly in service of making huge creatures later on, like ROE. But I agree that we won't know until we see more commons/uncommons.

Part of what made ROE such a slow set was an abundance of defensive creatures and removal for smaller threats. If all the Monstrosity creatures are like 3/1s, the set could be very aggressive. I don't see it happening because it means many of the set's mechanics won't be useful.

came here to see if anyone had posted thasa - card seems really good y/n? also makes the chroma rework a really cool flavor mechanic imo

i dont think you can really judge the speed of the format by either the intro pack rares or the mechanics imo

It seems insanely overpowered right now (then again, I said that about Temporal Mastery when that was spoiled...) - the indestructibility makes it nearly impossible for most colors to deal with it, outside of killing the permanents that give Devotion themselves. Also the Red and Green ones are gonna be ridiculous with BTE out there. Then again you have to know they're going to make these playable and I kinda suspected they wouldn't big splashy 8CC Myojin-like dudes.

also worth mentioning that Devotion is worded in such a way that it can by affected by things other than the mana symbols. so something like "your devotion to blue is increased by 3" is definitely possible

this makes me want to cast nightveil spectre on turn 5 p badly

Haha I spent a minute trying to figure out how Brave the Elements would make the Red and Green gods ridiculous.

other sets that people thought would be ROE-type slow during previews include RTR (turned out to be moderate speed) and AVR (turned out to be very fast). it's just really hard to tell this early and 8cmc monstrous costs are not necessarily unusable in a fast format anyway. innistrad was considered a fast format and you still got to flashback your Grasp of Phantoms in enough games for it to be a much stronger card than Time Ebb.