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Magic: the Gathering |OT13| Ixalan - Port to Sideboard

Ashodin

Member
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punisher cards suck

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Rigging Runner
R
Creature - Goblin Pirate
First strike
Raid - When ~ etb, if you attacked with a creature this turn, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
1/1

That's.... a damn good red aggro card
 
That looks more like the sort of Rare card draw sorcery they'd dump into red to remind red players that they will never be loved.

MaRo mentioned before that they're spreading punisher cards to black.

And yeah, Rigging Runner looks really good. 1 mana 1/1 first strike on turn one, then on later turns, it's likely a 1 mana 2/2 first strike.
 
The explanation is fine. The "Iconic" in Iconic Masters is supposed to be about the creature types: Angels, Sphinxes, Demons, Dragons & Hydras. It was announced that way and it seems unlikely that it wasn't in earnest. The problem, of course, is that most people don't think of that when they hear Iconic, so it really is a poor choice for a name.

Right. WotC sees "Iconic" as a term of art, which is fine when they're talking only about the creature types but leads to awkward mismatches when they broaden the meaning like this.
 
That one drop reminds me of War-Name Aspirant, which was a great card.
Who cares shivan dragon isn't in the set. Could have easily been downgraded to uncommon too.
okay there's 2 sphinxes and 3 hydras compared to a billion dragons, demons and angels. Which accurately reflects that the iconic races suck as a concept.
 

Justin

Member
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Field of Ruin
Land - - - Uncommon
T: Add C to your mana pool.
2,T, sacrifice ~: Destroy target nonbasic land an opponent controls. Each player searches his or her library for a basic land card, puts it onto the battlefield, then shuffles his or her library.
 

Daedardus

Member
That seems almost as good as ghost quarter and better than Tectonic Edge.

Activation cost is a huge hurdle, even though you get a land from it. Ghost Quarter can even do some tricks like destroying your own land to get a mana from a certain colour without having other mana available. Still, this card is a fair replacement for Ghost Quarter in standard.
 
jesus this is awful

Even if your opponent's only choice was "reveal top 3, opponent picks 2 for you to keep and loses 3 life" this would be garbage.

That's worse, I think? This is a "Draw 3, less one for each 3 life your opponent gives up." So it's something between 3CMC Draw 3 to a 3CMC 9 damage card. That's... not bad. It's a sorcery, which apparently makes it bad for some reason I'm still trying to figure out, but the numbers are decent.
 

Lucario

Member
That's worse, I think? This is a "Draw 3, less one for each 3 life your opponent gives up." So it's something between 3CMC Draw 3 to a 3CMC 9 damage card. That's... not bad. It's a sorcery, which apparently makes it bad for some reason I'm still trying to figure out, but the numbers are decent.

Nope, your opponent gets to choose which cards you keep.

Even if they didn't, this would still be bad.
 

Metroidvania

People called Romanes they go the house?
That's worse, I think? This is a "Draw 3, less one for each 3 life your opponent gives up." So it's something between 3CMC Draw 3 to a 3CMC 9 damage card. That's... not bad. It's a sorcery, which apparently makes it bad for some reason I'm still trying to figure out, but the numbers are decent.

The problem with it tho (IMO), is that your opponent gets to pick keep/throw on an individual basis, so they can let you keep the two lands and kill your bomb.

I mean, getting 3 cards for 3 (in black, and not blue, no less) isn't terrible, but it's not great, at all. Sorc speed makes it worse because it means you can't bluff/have options for using it at end of turn or what have you.
 
Nope, your opponent gets to choose which cards you keep.

Even if they didn't, this would still be bad.

Yeah, but 3 life for the privilege of denying you each one of those cards is pretty steep. Like, I know life is a resource, but even if you draw 2 decent picks and one bad one, spending 6 life to make sure you only get the one thing isn't something to sneeze at in 20 life games.

The problem with it tho (IMO), is that your opponent gets to pick keep/throw on an individual basis, so they can let you keep the two lands and kill your bomb.

I mean, getting 3 cards for 3 (in black, and not blue, no less) isn't terrible, but it's not great, at all. Sorc speed makes it worse because it means you can't bluff/have options for using it at end of turn or what have you.

That's still draw 2 with a ping on them for 3. If nothing else you've cleared those two lands off the top of the deck.

I get that sorcery is less flexible, which makes it worse, but a lot of the time I see spells basically tossed aside as irrelevant unless the effect is outrageously pushed, which I still don't get.
 

Lucario

Member
Yeah, but 3 life for the privilege of denying you each one of those cards is pretty steep. Like, I know life is a resource, but even if you draw 2 decent picks and one bad one, spending 6 life to make sure you only get the one thing isn't something to sneeze at in 20 life games.

The problem is that you're always going to get the worst possible option with this card, and in the majority of situations, letting your opponent pay life to deny you specific cards is horrible.

If you're in topdeck mode and your opponent has a decent life buffer - the kind of situation where a draw spell will usually shine - it does nothing. Maybe draws you a land.

Let's say you're playing some R/B burn variant, and you run this out after emptying your hand. Your opponent will just let you keep all of your lands/creatures and exile all of your burn spells that can deal more than 3 damage.

Even in the perfect situation - one where your opponent's life total is low enough that they can't afford to deny you cards - this is just a Painful Truths that gives your opponent information instead of costing 3 life.
 
The problem is that you're always going to get the worst possible option with this card, and in the majority of situations, letting your opponent pay life to deny you specific cards is horrible.

If you're in topdeck mode and your opponent has a decent life buffer - the kind of situation where a draw spell will usually shine - it does nothing. Maybe draws you a land.

Let's say you're playing some R/B burn variant, and you run this out after emptying your hand. Your opponent will just let you keep all of your lands/creatures and exile all of your burn spells that can deal more than 3 damage.

Even in the perfect situation - one where your opponent's life total is low enough that they can't afford to deny you cards - this is just a Painful Truths that gives your opponent information instead of costing 3 life.

Exactly. Base case is a 2B sorcery where you draw 3 and show your opponent. Is there a very very very very slight chance this could fit in a super aggro deck if other black card draw options aren't good (which, admittedly, they currently aren't)? Maybe. But Painful Truths hasn't seen play much lately and if you compare this to what will be around post-rotation it's the unplayed Live Fast where you get the worst 2 of your top 3, don't lose life, your opponent loses 3 life, and you don't get energy.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
"Explore" is going to be Rosewater's "our complexity is too high, in hindsight Explore wasn't needed" mechanic in State of Design next year isn't it?
 

Santiako

Member
Ooh! Angrath is a Minotaur Planeswalker that uses red-hot chains.

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I really hope we get him in Rivals, he could be the RB planeswalker.
 

Lucario

Member
I like the idea of the mechanic but from what has been shown so far it does feel like a throwaway in this set.

Seems like it's in there so people can cast expensive dinosaurs (and potentially durdle) in a limited format with tribal synergies that naturally reward aggression.

Both of the spoiled common explore cards are strong enough that they'll never be cut from an aggressive deck, but I'm guessing we'll see a bunch of 1/3s and 2/4s with explore by the time we get the full spoiler.
 
More details later, but from the new story, Dread Pirate Angrath is a minotaur planeswalker with Ghost Rider searing chains that can heat up his own body. Minotaurs don't appear to be native to Ixalan the plane. Huatli sparks while fighting him and sees Kaladesh. She interprets this as a vision of the Golden City, and the emperor views this as a sign that she must go on a journey to find it.
 

bigkrev

Member
"Explore" is going to be Rosewater's "our complexity is too high, in hindsight Explore wasn't needed" mechanic in State of Design next year isn't it?

10000000% percent. Probably with an explanation of "This was the last set to be designed in our old method, you shouldn't be seeing this in the future"
 

Lucario

Member
10000000% percent. Probably with an explanation of "This was the last set to be designed in our old method, you shouldn't be seeing this in the future"
"To remedy this, we've decided to abandon the top-down and bottom-up design methods. All set design will now be middle-out."
 
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