darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
Saw the card name and was excited.... then was bummed out when it wasnt a new Battle of Wits variant
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Magic: the Gathering |OT12| Hour of Devastation - Hour of Jace getting dunked on
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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Saw the card name and was excited.... then was bummed out when it wasnt a new Battle of Wits variant
A Serious Man
Member
And here's the Gift:
A seven drop that isn't guaranteed to do anything ever is pretty fucking garbage. The kinds of decks that run the number of creatures needed to get some value out of this thing aren't trying to durdle around into turns 7, 8, 9 and then slowly get some 4/4's. I don't even like it that much as a limited bomb.
It looks basically unplayable even in draft. Ok in sealed since it's usually fairly slower.
Simply Sarah
Member
I mean, that's the cost of a mono black commander. You have a colour that gives you a ton of unconditional tutors, Necro, Phyrexian Arena effects, cheap and effective creature removal, reanimation, and a 3 CMC adjustable board wipe that gets past indestructible, among other things. It doesn't need to give you everything.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
It's not okay for as long as CRift is legal.
Nah, its totally a limited bomb. It's basically Sandworm Convergence for every color. Moat aspect notwithstanding.
And its pretty guaranteed to do something unless they have instant speed artifact removal.
Still trash, but better than you are giving it credit for lol.
A Serious Man
Member
It's a limited bomb, just not a very good one. I'll probably lose to it in limited but the card annoys me and I hate it.
Imperfected
Member
Gift is fine for Limited because it's colorless. You're almost always going to have room for a seven drop tie-breaker in the format, I mean people run vanilla 7 mana creatures in Limited (happily, even).
Probably lower in Draft priority than a whole lot of cards, though.
Probably lower in Draft priority than a whole lot of cards, though.
Simply Sarah
Member
That is unrelated. If you want to argue that Cyclonic Rift is broken and should be banned then you can make that argument but that doesn't change the fact that it's a blue card doing a blue thing and has nothing to do with black's weaknesses.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
is there any other onesided mass bounce in blue? All I can find is a creature that only applies to creatures.
The thing is that all mono coloured decks can do all too often gets invalidated by this one spell. So when arguing for the strengths of single colours Green is the only one that can compete since it has unaffected mana accelaration to just replay everything right away. I mean look at the 1v1 Commander results it's either U G or a combination of colours.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
You're not supposed to do that. You play it with Gate to the Afterlife in Constructed. Is it good enough for that? No.
I don't have a solution obviously and it's also not my job to figure this out so it's quite pointless to be discussing solutions.
It's a huge flaw in the game and it should have been addressed ages ago but people are apparently fine with it so that's that. Of course, this also means that cards like Top will be banned for logistics reasons which is quite ridiculous since we're sacrificing gameplay purity just to make sure tournaments end on time. The fact that every match is a best-of-3 and it is common to see control decks not even being able to finish game 2 is a fairly ludicrous situation to be in.
Are spoilers done for the day? Can we go back to "critiquing" the Un-sets? I have not had the chance to complain about these masterpieces of comedy:
or this:
Time, energy and money went into creating those cards, and two full sets of other similarly themed cards with a third set on the way.
After looking through more of the previous un-sets they actually reference pop culture/real world more than I had previously believed. You have references to Dr. Suess (Clam-I-Am), James Bond (Goblin Secret Agent), Wrangler Jeans (Hurloon Wrangler), The Grateful Dead (Deadhead), Elvis (Elvish Impersonators), Live Aid (Land Aid '04), "Leet Speak" (Magical Hacker), The B-52's (Rock Lobster), I may be stretching here for these ones: H.G. Wells (Time Machine), Fight Club (Bosom Buddy). Those are just the ones I picked up on after one quick read.
I really would not be surprised if they had a card called "Wedge" or "The Community College" or "Marsh Hulk," or any thing that gives a wink to other MTG personalities. I am not saying that they shouldn't, I'd actually be totally fine if they included those nods in regular or other black-bordered supplemental sets. In fact, it would make those references even more meaningful.
I get that un-sets provide the team an opportunity to stretch and tweak the game in ways that would not be possible otherwise, but it still doesn't seem worth it to me, especially in a post Conspiracy world.
No fun allowed! Get off my lawn! Magic needs to be serious 100% of the time!
or this:
Time, energy and money went into creating those cards, and two full sets of other similarly themed cards with a third set on the way.
After looking through more of the previous un-sets they actually reference pop culture/real world more than I had previously believed. You have references to Dr. Suess (Clam-I-Am), James Bond (Goblin Secret Agent), Wrangler Jeans (Hurloon Wrangler), The Grateful Dead (Deadhead), Elvis (Elvish Impersonators), Live Aid (Land Aid '04), "Leet Speak" (Magical Hacker), The B-52's (Rock Lobster), I may be stretching here for these ones: H.G. Wells (Time Machine), Fight Club (Bosom Buddy). Those are just the ones I picked up on after one quick read.
I really would not be surprised if they had a card called "Wedge" or "The Community College" or "Marsh Hulk," or any thing that gives a wink to other MTG personalities. I am not saying that they shouldn't, I'd actually be totally fine if they included those nods in regular or other black-bordered supplemental sets. In fact, it would make those references even more meaningful.
I get that un-sets provide the team an opportunity to stretch and tweak the game in ways that would not be possible otherwise, but it still doesn't seem worth it to me, especially in a post Conspiracy world.
No fun allowed! Get off my lawn! Magic needs to be serious 100% of the time!
I do not think that Magic needs to be self-serious all the time and can make fun of its self whenever, it just does not need a fully developed draft set to do so. I really just wanted to make this post to call out those two cards which I think are some of the absolute worst cards found in either un-sets.
SigmasonicX
Member
Huh? What's wrong with Frazzled Editor?
Magic Online uses a chess clock, but that's completely unfeasable in a real life scenario where you would need to hit the button any time you are passing priority, which would be miserable for even experienced players (and poison to new players who wouldn't even understand what they are doing wrong)
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
timing out on modo is pretty bad as well.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The only thing people care about in Unsets are basic lands
SigmasonicX
Member
Well, while we're on the subject, I get the feeling that Unstable will explore card concepts that MaRo has talked about being very difficult in black border but are easy to understand. Particularly, last strike and triple strike. I could see cards like these.
Weapon Switching Soldier - 1W
(art depicts solider with short sword reaching for a large axe)
1W: Weapon Switching Soldier gets +3/+0 and gains last strike until end of turn. Activate only as a sorcery.
2/2
And a 1/1 triple strike creature for 2R.
I also think we might see "mill" as a silver border only keyword, since the set is targeted at those familiar with Magic, who would already know the term.
Weapon Switching Soldier - 1W
(art depicts solider with short sword reaching for a large axe)
1W: Weapon Switching Soldier gets +3/+0 and gains last strike until end of turn. Activate only as a sorcery.
2/2
And a 1/1 triple strike creature for 2R.
I also think we might see "mill" as a silver border only keyword, since the set is targeted at those familiar with Magic, who would already know the term.
The flavor text is just a penis joke.
Another thing I noticed while looking over the un-sets was dis-tasteful some of the cards are. I seriously can not imagine WoTC printing cards like Rod of Spanking today.
Marsh Hulk is already a card; also they don't do vanity cards anymore.
White can deal with Planeswalkers just fine. Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, etc.
Black can also deal with this new card (as long as it hasn't resolved yet) with discard and extraction effects like Sad Sac. There are also colorless ways to deal with the card. Since it only targets one player, in EDH, you can even get other players to get rid of it for you.
Since it's an Aura, with red you can get it with Shunt or Ricochet Trap.
Who/What/When/Where/Why and Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental are great. So I guess I just like the frames getting weird. That's all I really got.
I'm approaching the next one as "well this will be fun to draft once".
I'm approaching the next one as "well this will be fun to draft once".
In spite of all my negativity I will still buy at least 5 packs, because I can't help my self. I won't even draft, which is worse.
Remembrance
Member
The ideal version of Unstable would follow New World Order in terms of jokes.
Which is to say, jokes are a limited resource and not every common has to be trying too hard to be funny.
Which is to say, jokes are a limited resource and not every common has to be trying too hard to be funny.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
They've printed zero hype cards that have ever been even sensible.
Dark Intimations has no particular interaction with Bolas because getting 1 loyalty is lol and Bolas's ultimate sucks for 7 mana and 12 loyalty.
Renowned Weaponsmith fetched a dumb card.
Gate to the Afterlife is a combo with a dumb Johnny card.
Dark Intimations has no particular interaction with Bolas because getting 1 loyalty is lol and Bolas's ultimate sucks for 7 mana and 12 loyalty.
Renowned Weaponsmith fetched a dumb card.
Gate to the Afterlife is a combo with a dumb Johnny card.
I'm not sure I'd say it's "just" a penis joke. It's a common phrase that's relevant to the card, and the penis joke flows naturally from it.
I recall that Nintendo Power (RIP) used that phrase as the title of its review for Kirby Canvas Curse, but the narrow columns on the review page pushed the "pen" and the "is" right up against each other. So yeah, mistakes similar to the one that the card is making fun of aren't unheard of.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
It is sick but also straight garbage for the cost. It's a legendary token so congrats ya got a 1 mana 4/4 by playing 1 good equipment and 2 bad overcosted ones.
SigmasonicX
Member
Also, silly typos have been known to appear on normal Magic cards.
Imperfected
Member
Woah, hey. Renowned Weaponsmith fetched your choice of two different dumb cards.
Yeah they just need to stop with these.
Alright, maybe not "just" a penis joke, but still...a penis joke.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
It's just a penis joke.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Yeah but I wasn't going to draft Renowned Weaponsmith in the FRF pack just to get it.
Goblin Offensive.
reparations
charlequin
Banned
Again I note that people can't simply be like "I don't want to buy an Unset" even when it's costing them literally nothing by appearing in a death slot, not displacing a regular product, etc. and it's hard to explain this other than people actually really hating fun.
Yeah, the problem with the enchantment thing is just that it's completely unlike every other type of color "limitation" that exists in the game. Blue can't deal with permanents directly -- except it can polymorph them or bounce then counter them. Green can't deal with creatures directly -- except combat does that naturally and green gets tons of fight cards and such besides. White isn't supposed to get raw card advantage -- except they keep finding ways to break that because it's actually pretty constraining to not have that as an option in design.
The enchantment thing, on the other hand, is for whatever reason interpreted as an absolute unbreakable restriction -- it's not just that you can't kill enchantments, you also can't do anything useful to address them that isn't destroying. You're expected to operate 100% within the purview of any enchantment card that gets played against you no matter what, and your only option is to win (somehow?) to get out of it. It takes a whole element of give-and-take interactivity off of the table and thereby contributes to the problems with red as a color.
Yeah, the problem with the enchantment thing is just that it's completely unlike every other type of color "limitation" that exists in the game. Blue can't deal with permanents directly -- except it can polymorph them or bounce then counter them. Green can't deal with creatures directly -- except combat does that naturally and green gets tons of fight cards and such besides. White isn't supposed to get raw card advantage -- except they keep finding ways to break that because it's actually pretty constraining to not have that as an option in design.
The enchantment thing, on the other hand, is for whatever reason interpreted as an absolute unbreakable restriction -- it's not just that you can't kill enchantments, you also can't do anything useful to address them that isn't destroying. You're expected to operate 100% within the purview of any enchantment card that gets played against you no matter what, and your only option is to win (somehow?) to get out of it. It takes a whole element of give-and-take interactivity off of the table and thereby contributes to the problems with red as a color.
lol sure
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
wotc is a company with limited resources as such any used on an Unset is a waste to my tastes.
Which isn't the worst but contrary to different products I can still get cards of interest to me from other supplemental products.
Heck I'm actively interested in trying a couple of the PW deck PWs.
Which isn't the worst but contrary to different products I can still get cards of interest to me from other supplemental products.
Heck I'm actively interested in trying a couple of the PW deck PWs.
charlequin
Banned
I'm kind of joking but kind of serious there, what exactly is so bad about this when WotC makes ten products every individual person doesn't want every year? Like why is this so fundamentally offensive compared to all the other stuff?
There's no serious resource issue here given that it was designed mostly on the sly and that the nigh-universal feedback from 2016 was for WotC to release less product targeting moderate-to-serious competitive players each year.
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