Magic: The Gathering C/D

or mechanics rather

they should really just reuse old ones more often as the design space is getting kinda crowded and something like strive adds nothing to a game that already has multikicker

i think they consider kicker and channel mistakes now because they cover such vast areas of design space and make these narrower versions seem redundant when they make them. this and bloodrush and such are just them kind of pretending the more generalized versions didn't exist in an attempt to right that.

really, a huge amount of the mechanics they've made are just variants on kicker/modal spells

right yeah, overload...

recent modal mechanics: overload, unleash, bloodrush, bestow, strive

scars block and innistrad block somehow both had none, which is unusual

the boros god seems good, everything else seems... not good

i'm sure i'll waste a bunch of time trying to break the enchantress in standard

Yeah the JOU mechanics feel very much like development mechanics designed to smooth the playing environment, rather than design mechanics that are actually interesting or flavorful

i feel like the bestow mechanic is completely carrying this block on its back, everything else isn't really that exciting or new even if it plays well

Devotion is fun, but yeah

i like both bestow and devotion but feel like heroic was a bit of mistake, or at least a 'problem' in how it effected limited. its not really interesting to play with or against and really seems to have narrowed the avenues for limited play in theros block. i think its just too easy a mechanic if that makes any sense, it plays too naturally into the sort of things you want to be doing in limited already and reduces the number of fringe or build-around cards at uncommon in order to enable the mechanic in every color.

yeah i think that's spot on

some cool cards spoiled. UR god sounds pretty fun. white sword is sick. bounce-your-team kraken neat also.

yeah ur god seems borderline modern playable in uwr control as a planeswalker. would be fun to test at least.

could frogbs' mana bloom investment pay off? seems like there's at least a fringe playable combo deck appearing

one thing that occurred to me re constellation is that the heliod cleric tokens are enchantments. if you could get working with the green draw a card creature that would be quite nice. let's see what white gets for constellation. has heliod/white weenie been a constructed thing? feels like there are a bunch of decent 2/3 drops with 2w. and maybe that sword too now.

a constellation 'add one of any mana to your mana pool' elves (or whatever) would help that deck too

lotus satyr?

Keranos is really cool, looks at least Standard playable if a deck can be found. It's a harder to remove Planeswalker, but at the cost of not coming online the turn it is played. Actually I find having both Gods and Planeswalkers around a little confusing - always want to attack my opponent's Gods.

one thing that occurred to me re constellation is that the heliod cleric tokens are enchantment

so are the tokens created by hammer of purphoros and all the inspired uncommons from born of the gods. i look forward to several months of unwieldy 'combo' decks in standard where people try to get some kind of engine going

having a combo deck in standard for the first time in years would be nice I think

i totally agree but i just dont think it will be anything viable - even unburial rites was intended to be a fringe-playable strategy at best they just misunderstood how good a card thragtusk was in development - and would really like standard to open up a little bit more.

i think eidolon of blossoms has as much chance as anything to crack standard, though i doubt it will be a full-on combo deck unless there's a lot more support for it forthcoming

they should really just reuse old ones more often as the design space is getting kinda crowded and something like strive adds nothing to a game that already has multikicker

To me this is fine, as they've often pointed out half the mechanics they do are variants on kicker and split cards. I think there's something to be said for not reusing broad mechanics like Kicker or Channel to do narrow things like what Strive and Bloodrush are trying to do.

but if strive is just going to be used as a subset of kicker, why not just stick to that subset of kicker? like it adds nothing to the game and 2 years from now new players are going to have one more old rule they don't know about

http://puu.sh/81EWp.jpg

lol 100 life

http://puu.sh/81Fi8.jpg

this seems breakable, if not now, someday

(in old formats)

The corner of Brimaz's mouth twitched.

Ajani let himself smile.

Brimaz snorted, and soon the two leonin were chortling and embracing.

Setessan Tactics 1G
Instant
Rare

Strive – Setessan Tactics costs G more to cast for each target beyond the first.

Any number of target creatures each get +1/+1 and gain “T: Fight another target creature.”

whatever you think of the mechanic itself, these strive cards seem kinda sweet so far

xp i think they've created the expectation that each new set will have 2-3 new keyword mechanics. i think they should just break that cycle going forward.

zendikar is a great example of keyword minimalism, it had only one new keyword (landfall) and one returning one (kicker), and since it was working in new design space they got a whole large set out of that.

but if strive is just going to be used as a subset of kicker, why not just stick to that subset of kicker? like it adds nothing to the game and 2 years from now new players are going to have one more old rule they don't know about

new players don't really need to know about multikicker either. there's plenty of mechanics (such as most of the Ravnica ones) that players don't need to know about. at some point WoTC decided that having meaningless (like Hideaway) or redundant (like Strive) keyword mechanics was helping players link the cards together rather than clutter their mindspace, and to be honest I think they're right about that. they do a good job with reminder text in these situations.

like if Gruul's mechanic in Gatecrash was just Channel, but every Channel card did the same thing, that would feel a bit odd wouldn't it?

jeez tactics is a blowout. instant speed at that.

There's a careful balance they've struck with keyword mechanics; too few and people complain that there's nothing new even if there are unkeyworded mechanics (Mercadian Masques); too many and people get confused (Time Spiral). I don't think they're gonna let up having 2-3 new keyword mechanics per set anytime soon.

every block from alara through innistrad had 6 or 7 keyword mechanics, which i think is the sweet spot for the most part. 3 in the large set, 1 or 2 in each small set. RTR block had 11 and THS block has 9, so we're on the heaviest end of the spectrum right now.

this seems breakable, if not now, someday

New Ajani gets you 3/5 of the way there!

shimmering wings hardlocks the game with it if you have enough mana (you don't)

Is black aggro a deck now that there's a third 2-power 1-drop?

black aggro was already good enough with 8 1-drops, this guy just lets you go lower curve if you want to

also is straight up better than cackler even if you dont want to go to 12 1s

http://puu.sh/81Fi8.jpg

this seems breakable, if not now, someday

I'm not so sure about that - all the recursive Timewalk things like Walk the Aeons and Time Sieve have not been broken either and this seems much harder than either of them, you have to target it with 5 seperate spells to get your extra turn which seems incredibly difficult. Feels like a $1 mythic to me.

you don't need to target it with 5 spells, though that is a way to do it, you just need a regular way to get lots of +1/+1 counters on it

lol I hadn't even considered that, just shows you how linear my brain can be when it comes to Magic cards - still feels difficult considering that nearly all the +1/+1 spells are in Green and White. now that you mention it I guess it does seem like there could exist a card that totally breaks it (maybe as part of a big dumb Necrotic Ooze combo)

i think sage of hours is exciting and might find its way into standard

yeah even w/i standard you have all the evolve stuff and all the scavenge stuff

master biomancer, corpsejack menace, etc

vorel too

there's always all sorts of feedback mechanisms like these waiting in the wings in standard and occasionally you hit some critical mass of them that coalesce into a weird deck. most recent example is the burn at the stake combo deck from last year but sometimes the deck is better than that.

another fun one that never quite made it was the surge node/unwinding clock prison deck from the tail end of zendikar/scars standard