Magic: The Gathering C/D

Huh, I just checked out the Legacy banned list. Didn't realize there were so many cards they've removed, but I don't follow it much. Looks like all the good draw-7s are banned.

they unbanned time spiral a year or 2 ago but yeah there's none available at 3cmc

i'm not too worried about stalker/cipher, presumably its the first thing the devs thought of too. any board disruption ciphers are likely to be very conservatively costed, i think even just unsummon would have to cost 3 or 4 mana to prevent the early soft-lock

the common ones will be small effects like...mill 3-4 cards, target creature doesn't untap next turn, draw 1, target player discards 1, etc

the windfall effect doesn't seem conservatively costed!

first round of previews are up

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/gtc/5htsd44dbw_en.jpg

without seeing the rest of the set i'm gonna go ahead and predict this will be my most owned card from gatecrash by the end of the format

you know I had misread 'evolve' until now and thought it was a one and done counter like unleash.

bloodrush is kinda lame, can't wait to play against decks w/ 10 combat tricks

I like the rest tho

The flavor text on Boros Elite makes me think there may be a new Gideon Jura in this set.

I was excited about Bloodrush, but then realized I was reading "Discard" as "Sacrifice".

Oh, and my son has requested that I let you guys know he'd really like to see a new Ajani card in this deck, but that probably isn't happening.

the planeswalkers in this set are already confirmed as gideon (probably a W/R one since he's hanging out w/ the boros story-wise) and Domri Rade, a new R/G planeswalker. there could possibly be a 3rd but unlikely

ghost dad 2.0!
http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/gtc/m2t717ynfw_en.jpg

this is so insane

man I remember when a 5/5 for 5 mana would have been a good card

i'm really looking forward to gatecrash limited. i think it's gonna be fun playing against decks full of combat tricks, not to mention comboish stuff like cipher. i personally think i'm gonna play gruul in prerelease. looks almost like a burn deck with the ability to bluff bloodrush every attack, then actually pop bloodrush for the finishing damage. simic looks nice too. i bet cloudfin raptor and drakewing krasis will be powerhouses at common

also lamp, me and my friend are drafting tomorrow at dueling grounds, 6:30. come after your work ?

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/gtc/iu0xzauwx9_en.jpg

this card is gonna be pretty nasty in limited

that thing would be a force in 4-pack sealed. y'know, if it existed anymore. looks good but I dunno if it'll be better than Increasing Confusion

so far the set looks like a lot of fun, especially for Limited. both green and blue got evolve one-drops which I feel are going to be really important for Simic. that said I'm not sure about a lot of these rares, lots of them seem like a lot of fun but I'm not sure what the money cards are yet. New Gideon and Ghost Dad look insane. Aurelia looks awesome but 6-mana Boros cards don't seem very playable at this stage. Then again lots to be spoiled yet so I stay optimistic.

Stolen Identity looks like an automatic win if it hits the board. Repeatedly copy the best creature on the board? Maybe throw in a little Populate? Sure, why not?

gideon doesn't actually do anything

ghost dad 2.0 is the biggest money card so far i think

need to see more commons before i get too excited about limited, they barely show any during preview weeks anymore

agreed but I think that lately they've been doing really well balancing the commons for limited so if the mechanics look fun I have no doubt that Limited will play well.

as far as Gideon goes it does seem very interesting and I don't know how it's going to play out; the more counters you get from the +1, the more likely it is that it'll lose loyalty the next turn, but it seems strong enough to play well in both midrange and control. if you get to activate the first ability for 2 counters then you've essentially got a four mana 6/6 indestructable attacker that doesn't die to sweepers

the old gideon was great in control because it had 2 abilities that played defense until you had the board locked up enough to start swinging with it. this one is just a hard-to-kill creature that can't block and i don't think that's appealing in a control deck that needs its cards to all push towards stabilization

agreed that Gideon v1's +2 ability was what really made the thing so frustrating to play against. I can see why there may be better options in control but the power level seems very high in general and I have to believe it'll find a deck somewhere. Then again I thought the same of Vraska and nobody's really playing her are they?

Gideon 2 is pretty terrible IMO, he does nothing to stabilize. Best case is he's a resilient threat against control, but if you think of him as a creature that dodges a Wrath, why not just play a more versatile Thragtusk or Predator Ooze? Seriously finding it hard to imagine when this guy would be good. Strangely, Ghost Counsel is basically the Gideon 2 that decks want: dodges Wrath and stabilizes.

i think mind grind is going to be the glimpse the unthinkable of this set, a card that's mysteriously worth $10 despite being constructed-unplayable

people just fucking love to mill

it's a more satisfying way to win the game

mystic genesis is only $1 preorder on starcity, i am tempted to order a playset. i was hoping they'd put up Clan Defiance and Firemane Avenger cheap too but those are both $4. the Avenger kind of seems boxed out of standard by a lot of other good 4-drops but i can imagine it being very good down the road

how much is the gr tutor? feel like that might end up being good

i dunno, not much, but i figure these are all cards i can pickup for a buck or 2 after the set is out.

firemane avenger matches up quite poorly vs restoration angel, but imagining a world where your opponent doesn't have that card, it seems like it utterly breaks aggro mirrors. i kind of like it.

imo crypt ghast is the biggest sleeper so far. i'm seeing nirkana revenant at like $9 and crypt ghast is just so, so, so much better. ramping from 4 to 8-10 is insane. still not sure if it'll be constructed playable - too much of that deck seems like it revolves around only that one card - but the mana doubling effect just looks crazy powerful. the 4CC is so key

yeah crypt ghast also seems like a p good fit w/mind grind. have been wondering if a playset of m13 liliannas might be worth picking up but it might be too late to get them really cheap

firemane seems like sort of card that has to be bad, otherwise magic doesnt work anymore

Crypt Ghast is probably the one card I'm most excited about so far because I definitely have a couple decks that could benefit greatly from black ramp.

I misread Ghost Council; yeah that thing is even better than I thought. Anyway I guess I am just overrating Gideon, didn't really think about how the presence of Thragtusk kinda nerfs other midrange resilient dudes. Still Predator Ooze is GGG so you won't be seeing that in many control decks.

RG creature tutor seems pretty awful. I really hoped theyd reprint Eldamri's Call at some point and this seems a good deal worse.

Firemane is not that good, even once Resto rotates. Hellrider is a good comparison, since neither card is efficient enough on its own, but quite good with lots of creatures out. But Hellrider has haste and activates the turn it comes down, even if it doesn't attack. Also, 3 toughness means it dies to almost every removal spell so it's not even that good in the mirror. I still think it's a really fun card, and a bomb in limited, just not good enough for Constructed.

I'd like to see a well-costed Battalion guy with haste, I could see that getting a lot of play.

xp Yeah that creature tutor is a joke. Would love to see Eldamri's Call come back instead.

hellrider is a card i was picking up as a $1-2 throw-in a year ago, i think the potential reward of doing the same with something like firemane outweighs the risk. these are the types of cards i look for when new sets come out, the actual home run constructed cards are generally pretty obvious but the fringe ones aren't.

I too tried hard to pick up 4 Hellriders and I'm glad I got them. I thought it would settle in around $4-5 at least because it's got a great aggro ability that no other card really has right now and if it doesn't catch on in Standard there's a chance something like that could work in Modern. Firemane would have worked better IMO as 3RW and haste. Battallion seems interesting but it feels a bit "win more" unless there are some good Signal Pest-type dudes in development (by the way, Battle Cry would have been an excellent Boros mechanic)

So far my favorite thing about the set are the crazy creature types on the Simic cards. Seems like the most fun guild by a mile.

Haha wow, I had not noticed the Simic creature types. That's awesome. I bet it's the kind of thing that comes across way better when you're looking at actual cards vs. reading text on a screen.

Whoa. For a half second I thought the new preview card was called "Syndic of Titties"

can't find a way to hotlink this but the G/U mythic seems really excellent; maybe not great if many sweepers are running around but in an enviroment w/ Thragtusk it feels like it could often be a better Titan?

also Frontline Medic has perhaps one of the strangest abilities I've ever seen on a card lately, guess Sphinx's Revelation is just running wild these days?

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/gtc/9js3k7phym_en.jpg

also an answer for Bonfire

xpost

I haven't seen a band-aid card this clumsy since Teferi's Response. Still it's an exciting card.

The Prime Speaker seems like a nice tool in a certain type of deck - I already desperately want to make a Corpsejack Menace deck w/ the doubling Hydra and Predator Ooze, this guy would be absolutely ridiculous there.

Also seems pretty stupid with Deadeye Navigator! (as do a lot of cards)

Medic is such a mish-mash of a card. It's a Medic that is apparently a fighter (why is a Medic 3/3?), and sacs to Mana Leak an X spell? Pretty much screams "card made by development to fix problems in Standard".

zegana is pretty good yeah, not sure if its better than garruk primal hunter which has a similar draw ability but can't be blinked etc for more cards. medic is the first card spoiled that might actually make it into my current standard deck (naya humans)

i'm adding the cipher plague thing to my sleepers list though it's a pretty loose one since its the type of card i think they'd pay special attention to to make sure its not good

Especially since you'll be able to play Invisible Stalker for a good while in Standard. I would think development would spend a lot of extra time tweaking those cards to ensure nothing gets out of hand. You'd think after Urza's block they'd be a lot better identifying things that have the potential to be seriously broken, but then again we've gotten Storm and Affinity/artifact lands since, not to mention Dredge. I think every Cipher card deserves a second look, especially when you consider that if you build around them you can activate them twice the first turn. Still I fear that Development may price nearly all of them out of Standard play.

well Boros just got A) a stupidly good Charm and B) the most flexible, upside-loaded Fireball ever printed

Just saw Boros Charm, probably the best charm of the lot. Double strike not too relevant in Standard, but a combination Flame Rift/2-mana Rootborn Defenses is insane for aggro decks. I've been waiting for them to make an anti-Wrath card that actually has some value against non-Wrath decks. This plus the new Flames of the Blood Hand makes control look a lot worse.

yeah that XRW card in limited is uhhh